William D M Paton

Sir William Drummond Macdonald Paton was a British pharmacologist and Fellow of the Royal Society (1917-1993) who is considered one of the world's greatest pharmacologists. He discovered two new classes of drugs acting on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and developed Decamethonium and Hexamethonium, groundbreaking neuromuscular blocking and blood pressure-lowering drugs. He also solved the problem of convulsions in deep-sea divers and had a special interest in the history of medicine, serving as Honorary Director of the Wellcome Institute for History of Medicine.