James Whyte Black was born on June 14, 1924, in Uddingston, Scotland, to a working-class family. His father was a Scottish coal miner who worked his way up to mining engineer. Black was the youngest of four sons. One of his older brothers studied medicine and Black soon followed in his footsteps. At age fifteen, he won a residential scholarship to St. Andrew's University, where he received his medical degree in 1946. He remained as an assistant lecturer from 1946 to 1947 before traveling to Malaysia to serve as a senior lecturer in physiology at the University of Malaya from 1947 to 1950. He returned to Scotland in 1950 and lectured in physiology at Glasgow Veterinary School until 1958. During this time he began research on the mechanism of increase in gastric secretions caused by the body's production of histamine. This research formed the basis for his later work on blocking histamine receptors (chemical groups in plasma...