Abstract
PROF. SIR DAVID ORME MASSON, who died at Melbourne on August 10, was born at Hampstead, London, on January 13, 1858. He was of mixed English and Scots descent. His father, Prof. David Masson, editor of Milton, Goldsmith and De Quincey, and Historiographer-Royal for Scotland, came of Aberdeenshire stock—there is a saying in the Don valley that "Eassons, Massons an' Kessons a' cam' frae Tarlandside". His mother, Rosaline Orme, had a forbear George Rutt, the father of Joseph Priestley's biographer, John Towill Rutt ; and it may be mentioned, as throwing some light on the family, that the home of the Ormes, in Avenue Road, Hampstead, was a favourite rallying ground of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1865 David Masson migrated from the chair of English literature at University College, London, to the Regius chair of English in the University of Edinburgh, and so it came about that his son, David Orme Masson, was educated at Edinburgh Academy and afterwards graduated M.A. and B.Sc. at Edinburgh.
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READ, J. Sir David Orme Masson, K.B.E., F.R.S. Nature 140, 534–536 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140534a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140534a0