Samuel Victor Perry Rugby player
Samuel Victor Perry FRS (16 July 1918 – 17 December 2009) was an English biochemist who was a pioneer in the field of muscle biochemistry. In his earlier years he was a rugby union lock who played club rugby for Cambridge University R.U.F.C. and international rugby for England.After schooling in Southport Perry took a biochemistry degree at the University of Liverpool. His academic career was then interrupted by war service in the Royal Artillery, though he spent much of the Second World War in Italian and German prisoner-of-war camps after being captured during the Western Desert Campaign. After his liberation and demobilisation, he undertook doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. This was followed by a period of post-doctoral study in the United States, before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer. In 1959 he moved to the University of Birmingham as head of its new biochemistry department.Perry's later career saw him serve on several of the British research councils, and working with the charities the British Heart Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.