William Bate Hardy

Who was William Bate Hardy?

Sir William Bate Hardy FRS was a British biologist and food scientist.

He was born in Erdington, Birmingham and graduated with a Master of Arts from the University of Cambridge, where he carried out biochemical research. He first suggested the word hormone to E.H. Starling.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1902 and delivered their Croonian Lecture in 1905, their Bakerian Lecture in 1925 and won their Royal Medal in 1926. Hardy delivered the Guthrie lecture to the Physical Society in 1916.

In 1920 Hardy, in cooperation with Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, the secretary of the Medical Research Committee, persuaded the trustees of the Sir William Dunn legacy to use the money for research in biochemistry and pathology. To this end they funded Professor Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins in Cambridge with a sum of £210,000 in 1920 for the advancement of his work in biochemistry. Two years later they endowed Professor Georges Dreyer of the Oxford University with a sum of £100,000 for research in pathology.