Francis Kiernan

Francis Kiernan FRS (2 October 1800 – 31 December 1874) was an anatomist and physician.

He was born in Ireland; his father was also a physician and brought the family to England in the early 1800s. Kiernan was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Ware, Hertfordshire, and was trained in medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, becoming a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1825.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834 and was awarded its Copley Medal in 1836 for his work on the anatomy of the liver. That same year he became a founding Member of the Senate of the University of London, where he acted as examiner and lecturer in anatomy and physiology.

In 1843 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and later served on its Council. After a single year as Vice-President (1864-5), he declined re-nomination on the grounds of ill-health, having suffered a paralytic stroke, in 1865, from which he never fully recovered.

He died unmarried at his home in Manchester Street, Manchester Square, London on New Year’s Eve, 1874, and was buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Mortlake, London.