Born at Manchester, the fifth son of John George Adami by his wife Sarah Ann Ellis, daughter of Thomas Leech, of Urmston, Lancashire. His uncle, David John Leech (1840-1900), was Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Victoria University, and Physician to the Manchester Royal Infirmary. The family of Adami was of Italian origin, and many members of it had followed the profession of medicine. They had settled latterly in Manchester and Ashton-upon-Mersey. George Adami was educated at the Manchester Grammar School and Owens College, whence he went to Cambridge in 1880, matriculating from Christ's College at the same time as his life-long friend Arthur Everett Shipley. He obtained a scholarship at the College, was Darwinian Prizeman in 1885, and was elected an honorary fellow in 1920. He was an active member of the Cambridge University Natural Science Club, where he read papers on "Rudiments in Man", "The Thymus", and "Medical Degrees" before he graduated. He obtained a first class in Parts I and II of the Natural Science Tripos (1882 and 1884) in a list which included A E Shipley and Henry Head. He then went to Breslau, and in Heidenhain's Laboratory worked at the blood-supply in the frog's kidney. Returning to Manchester, he followed the ordinary course of medical training, was admitted MRCS, and served as house physician for six months at the Royal Infirmary under Drs Morgan, Dreschfeld, and Ross. By this time he had made his reputation as a physiologist, and was elected a member of the Physiological Society on Nov 12th, 1887. He returned to Cambridge in April, 1888, as Demonstrator of Pathology to Professor Charles Smart Roy in succession to (Sir) Almroth Wright. In this position he carried out an extensive research on the cardiovascular system, and continued his work on the glomeruli of the kidney and on albuminuria. In 1889, when investigating rabies among the deer in Tekworth Pak, he was wounded whilst making a post-mortem examination of one of them. He underwent the Pasteur treatment in Paris, after which he suffered from symptoms of abortive hydrophobia, which he himself said were due to auto-suggestion. In 1889 he proceeded MB in the University of Cambridge, having taken his MA degree in the previous year, and in 1892 graduated MD. He was appointed John Lucas Walker Student in Pathology in 1890, continuing his experimental work, and illustrating it in a number of papers which appeared in the *Medical Chronicle*. He returned to Paris for a short time to work at the Pasteur Institute, and in 1891 was elected Fellow of Jesus College and again resided in the University. In the autumn of 1892 he went to Montreal as the first Strathcona Professor of Pathology in McGill University, and there carried on the work which Sir William Osler had "begun by holding morbid anatomy classes in a cloakroom". As Professor of Pathology he was very successful in training his pupils and in encouraging such people as Professor O Klotz, C W Duval, W W Ford, G A Charleton and Maude E Wood to undertake original research. This work in Canada was appreciated by his colleagues, and he acted as President of the Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis from 1909-1912, President of the Royal Society of Canada in 1912, and President of the American Association of Physicians in the same year. He was elected MA, MD (ad eundem) McGill, in 1899 and LLD Toronto in 1912. In the meantime he was not forgotten at home, for he was made FRS in 1905, FRCP London in 1913, and was awarded the Fothergillian Gold Medal by the Medical Society of London in 1914. In 1917 he delivered the Croonian Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians, taking as his subject "Adaptation and Disease". On the outbreak of war (1914-1918) Adami at once volunteered for service overseas, and received a temporary commission as colonel in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, acting as Assistant Director of Medical Services in charge of Records with headquarters in London. In 1917 he was Chairman of a Special Committee to report on the standardization of routine pathological methods, and for those services he was decorated CBE in 1919. His report to the University of London on medical education was highly controversial. On April 10th, 1919, he was elected FRCS as a member of twenty years' standing. In June, 1919, he was chosen unanimously Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, and the rest of his life was spent in administrative work and in the collection of funds for the maintenance and endowment of the University. In 1920 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He died on Aug 29th, 1926, and is buried in Allerton Cemetery, Liverpool. He married: (1) Mary, daughter of J A Cantlie of Montreal, and (2) Marie, daughter of the Rev Thomas Wilkinson, Vicar of Litherland. He left two children by his first wife. [1] Adami was a leading pathologist, a genial companion, a man of great culture outside his profession, and of tireless energy. *The Principles of Pathology*, the first volume of which was published in 1909, shows him to have been a master of his subject, and its appearance marked an epoch in the science. Four years later he wrote with his friend Dr John McCrae, of McGill University, a successful text-book on pathology. [Amendment from the annotated edition of * Plarr's Lives* at the Royal College of Surgeons: [1] *The Times* 23 Oct 1945 "BAIN - On Oct 18, 1945, in London, Isabel, wife of SIR FREDERICK BAIN, of 29, Palace Court, W.2., and the daughter of the late Dr J. G Adami, FRS, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, and of the late Mrs. Adami, of Montreal. Funeral private. Memorial service at St. Matthew's Church, St. Petersburgh Place, Bayswater, to-day (Tuesday), at 2.30 p.m. No letters, please."]