Jean Irvine

Jean Kennedy Irvine (22 July 1876 – 3 March 1962) was a pharmacist from Hawick, Scotland and the first woman president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Early life and education Jane Kennedy, known from an early age as Jean, was born on 22 July 1876 in Hawick, Scotland to Jane Kennedy (née Law) and Walter Phillips Kennedy, a bookseller. She served an apprenticeship in her home town with the pharmacist Thomas Maben, and qualified in 1900. Career After registering as a Pharmaceutical Chemist with the Pharmaceutical Society, she became assistant pharmacist, then chief pharmacist to the Glasgow Apothecaries Company. She worked for well-known Glasgow pharmacist John McMillan, and then joined the staff of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. After her marriage to fellow Pharmaceutical Chemist Peter Irvine (1876-1949) on 2 June 1904, she assisted him in running the two pharmacies he owned within Glasgow. When her husband was recruited to the army on the outbreak of the First World War, Irvine moved to London so she could be closer to him. She took a job in 1914 checking the pricing of National Health Insurance prescriptions, and then in 1916 after centralised pricing bureaux were established, she became the superintendent of the Joint Committee for Pricing Prescriptions (South-Eastern Division), which was responsible for overseeing the pricing of prescriptions in the region and held this position for 35 years until her retirement in 1947.