Professor James Young Simpson (3 August 1873 – 20 May 1934) FRSE FRSSA FRAI DJur(Hon) DSc(Hon) was a Scottish zoologist, writer, diplomat, biographer and theologian. After World War I, he was instrumental in establishing the Baltic states and Finland as independent nations. Life James Young Simpson was born at 52 Queen Street in Edinburgh on 3 August 1873 to Margaret Stewart Barbour, sister of Alexander Hugh Freeland Barbour, and Sir Alexander Russell Simpson (1835–1916), professor of midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. His father was a nephew of his namesake, James Young Simpson, the first person to use chloroform as an anesthetic on humans. The family lived at 52 Queen Street, a property inherited from his great-uncle. Simpson was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh, which he attended from 1891 to 1894, graduating with an MA. After two summers as a research student at Christ's College, Cambridge (1899/1900), he completed his DSc in 1901 at the University of Edinburgh. From 1899, he lectured in natural science at the University of Edinburgh. He was given his professorship in 1904. In 1900 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James Cossar Ewart, Sir William Turner, Sir John Murray, and Alexander Buchan. In 1910, he was living at 25 Chester Street in Edinburgh's West End. He died on 20 May 1934 in Edinburgh. He is buried with his parents in the south-west section of Grange Cemetery close to the rear embankment behind the central vaults. Family He married Helen Huntington Day of Indianapolis, Indiana, US. His younger brother was George Freeland Barbour Simpson. Work As a boy, he visited Paris with his father and was introduced to Louis Pasteur. Pasteur laid his hand on Simpson's head and exclaimed: "Travaillez, mon ami, travaillez!" [Work, my friend, work!] Turning to the father, he said "A-t-il dit, Oui?" [Has he said, yes?] Simpson seems to have implemented Pasteur's injunction throughout his life. In his writings, his dominant interest lay in showing the connection between science and religion. In his view, there is no contradiction between these, and he views Christianity as the natural outcome of man's evolutionary progress. Jesus Christ is "the fulfillment of all that went before. . . He is the Alpha and Omega of strictly human history." and so on. In a later book, Nature: Cosmic, Human and Divine (1929), Simpson