Andrew H. Wyllie

Andrew H. Wyllie is a Scottish pathologist. In 1972, while working with electron microscopes at the University of Aberdeen he realised the significance of natural cell death. He and his colleagues John Kerr and Alastair Currie called this process apoptosis, from the use of this word in an ancient Greek poem to mean "falling off" (like leaves falling from a tree). His works have contributed to the understanding of apoptosis in health and in disease, and he continues to lecture to undergraduate medical and natural sciences students in Cambridge today.