Sir William Aitken FRS was a Scottish pathologist. Aitken, the eldest son of William Aitken, a medical practitioner of Dundee, was born there on 23 April 1825. Having received his general education at the High School, he was apprenticed to his father, and at the same time attended the practice of the Dundee Royal Infirmary. In 1842, he matriculated at the university of Edinburgh, and in 1848 graduated M.D., obtaining a gold medal for his thesis 'On Inflammatory Effusions into the Substance of the Lungs as modified by Contagious Fevers'.
