William Wilson (Bill) Ingram was born in Craigellachie, Scotland, and went to Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen. After graduation from the University of Aberdeen he worked at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and in the pathology department of the university before going to the Lister Institute in London as a research assistant.

After war service in France, during which he was wounded in action, he returned to Aberdeen as a lecturer in morbid anatomy and was awarded MD with honours in 1919. He then decided to travel, stopping over in Sydney where he obtained an appointment as a lecturer in Professor Henry Priestley's department of physiology at Sydney University. He decided to stay and began a general practice on the Pacific Highway in the North Shore's Killara. Shortly afterwards he was appointed honorary pathologist to Royal North Shore Hospital and established the Hospital's first routine pathology service. He set aside some laboratory space for research work and the Institute of Pathological Research was formed in 1923. He was instrumental in obtaining funds for a separate institute to be built in the Hospital grounds and, with Mrs Eva Kolling as the principal benefactor, the Kolling Institute of Medical Research was founded in 1931. Dr Ingram was its director until 1974. For part of this time the routine pathology services were also carried out in the Institute and he was director of clinical pathology until 1965.

Additionally he was appointed an honorary assistant physician in 1925, then honorary physician in 1927 when he left his general practice to take rooms in Macquarie Street. Before setting up there, however, he undertook a year's postgraduate study in London. As a direct result of this work he established at the Hospital the first clinic for the treatment of diabetes and in 1933 published a text book on The Diagnosis and Treatment of Diabetes, of which there were four editions over the next ten years.

After service in the Second World War Dr Ingram returned to Royal North Shore Hospital as its senior physician and was one of those instrumental in setting it up as a teaching hospital. He chaired various committees and was appointed Co-ordinator of Clinical Studies. He was the first lecturer in clinical medicine and the first chairman of the board of medical studies from 1948 to 1974. He also serves as chairman on medical staff. He was responsible for setting up the first medical and scientific library at the Hospital in 1931. This was a project dear to him and he continued to foster it as its chairman until 1980, when it was the last of the many positions he had held at RNSH over sixty years.

He served with distinction in other spheres as well. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I he went to France with the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In 1915, after being wounded in action, he was sent home. After recovery he worked briefly under Sir William Osler at the Mount Vernon Military Hospital in London but returned to France in 1916 attached to the 10 Dragoon Guards. He also served with the 11 General Hospital and at the end of the War he was in charge of pathology services with the British Expeditionary Force in France. During World War II he served four years as a lieutenant colonel and Officer Commanding the Medical Divisions of the 119, 102 and 104 Australian General Hospitals. He was in command of the Military Hospital during the period of the Darwin bombing and evacuation. Between wars Dr Ingram went on two British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions (BANZARE) on the Discovery as the medical officer and member of the scientific teams led by Sir Douglas Mawson, spending eighteen months in the Antarctic. Of him, Mawson subsequently wrote:

In Dr Ingram, the Expedition was most favourable for there could have been no more ideal medical officer for such an undertaking, where scientific research is linked with hazard, and demands of physical endurance and a full measure of camaraderie.

He subsequently filled the offices of president of the Old Contemptibles Association and of the Antarctic Club, Australia. His decorations included the Military Cross, the Mons Star and the Polar Medal and Clasp. He was also mentioned in dispatches from France by Field Marshall French for "gallant and distinguished service in the field". His first marriage was dissolved following his return from the Antarctic. In 1936 he married Dorothy King, a New Zealander who trained as a nurse at Royal North Shore and whom he met when she was allocated to run his diabetes clinic at that Hospital. They enjoyed a happy and satisfying union summed up in his remark: "Dorothy and I have so much fun together". He was ninety-one when he finally retired from his Macquarie Street practice, but then only after a bad fall, which resulted in a hip replacement, caused him to lose confidence. A most remarkable man who lived a full and active life into his ninety second year.