William Alexander Osborne was born a son of the manse at Holywood, County Down. He grew up in a family acquainted with such notables as the Brontes, Lord Kelvin and Captain Moonlite, a catholicity which he carried through his life.

After the local school, he studied medicine at Queen's College, Belfast and graduated, MB ChB `First of College' in 1895. Thence, on a scholarship, he went to Tubingen to study biochemistry and physics, graduating DSc in 1899. His status in biochemistry led to an appointment as lecturer in physiology at University College, London, in Professor Starling's Institute of Physiology, where he specialised in protein biochemistry. Readers will get a feel for the scope and depth of the Institute by reading Starling's Croonian lectures in Lancet, 1904.

Osborne was at an advanced level when the University of Melbourne created the chair of physiology (and histology) in 1903. Supported by Starling and Halliburton, Osborne was the successful applicant. He married Ethel Goodson, MSc, and had arrived in Melbourne when the fact that the accountant, Dixon, had embezzled the endowment funds was discovered, casting gloom and despair over the institution. But the Fink Commission and Premier Bent restored its finances, and Osborne quickly recruited an active talented group of graduates. With Basil Kilvington he investigated regeneration of nerves and with others a variety of topics. Progress in work and publication was very good until the outbreak of World War I, when all dispersed leaving Osborne with the whole teaching load This was exacerbated when post-war classes of over two hundred appeared. He showed some return to original research in the late 1920s and then the Depression cut the ground from under everybody's feet.

Almost certainly a feature of Osborne's make-up which contributed to diminution of his scientific drive was his multi-faceted competence. When staff were short and lectures frequent it was, for him, satisfying to read a new article or poem, whether it was in French, or German or Italian or Spanish, or even write one, e.g. The Laboratory and Other Poems, Essays and Literary Sketches, Essays and Studies, all from Lothian, Melbourne. His prose was better than his poems and his lectures were models of syntax and style. These and his orations were spiced with allusions from classical and modern texts. He was an encyclopaedist with well-ordered systems of recall. But his taste was his own and reflected unusual diversity. His memory and his library spanned the Roman Empire, the Spanish, especially in relation to the Moors, central America and the opening of the West. He was an authority on Napoleon, Buffalo Bill and Mary Pickford! He held the office of chairman of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, councillor of the Historical Society of Victoria, charter president of the First Australian Rotary Club and chief Commonwealth appeals censor of films. As principal member of the quiz session, `Information please' his knowledge of sport, to our initial surprise, out-shone the specialist in that field. He was tall, handsome and blue-eyed, always impeccably dressed in town, suitably dressed when pitching hay on his 500 acre farm at Kangaroo Grounds, or milking the goat at his university residence. He took pride in his physical skills. He was an excellent shot, an accomplished canoeist and a competent bushman. His response to affronts often reflected his keenness as a student boxer, but he could attack obliquely. Victor Bonney, the London surgeon, addressed us on the basis of surgery, emphasising manual dexterity and never once mentioning the need for a knowledge of physiology. The next morning he encountered Osborne `practising' casting several types of boomerang skilfully. His response to Osborne's invitation to try his hand was far from dexterous, as Osborne left him in no doubt.

In the organisational life of the University, Osborne played a relatively muted role in contrast with Berry in anatomy. Osborne was president of the professorial board 1919-21 and a member of council, but it was Berry who got the new building and staff and took histology away from physiology. Osborne's turn as dean of the faculty of medicine 1929-38 saw no significant improvement in that faculty except the creation of the chair of biochemistry. His diminishing drive was certainly at least partly due to carbon monoxide. In 1939 a fracture was found in a lead gas pipe under his study - the smell had been filtered out by the several layers of felt and carpet which had been laid one upon the other for decades. When asked whether he had experienced any symptoms he replied `Not I, but if I ever spent much time there my wife always accused me of having been at the bottle'. His rationalism and deprecatory pamphlet on What We Owe to Ireland were negative influences in those days.

After his retirement he worked his farm, his library and his pen until, about 1960, Melbourne winters drove him to an old favourite resort - Magnetic Island in North Queensland. Here he influenced the establishment of the James Cook University in Townsville and gave it the major part of his fine library. In 1966 he returned, invalided by age and a minor stroke, to Melbourne. Almost totally blind and deaf he dictated his memoirs, necessarily without notes, clear in mind to the last.

His children were Gerard, DSc, managing director of Kraft, Australia; Audrey, MSc, senior lecturer in biochemistry (University of Melbourne), Lady Fitts MB BS, University of Melbourne, and Claris.