Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A post-War O.B.E. group of four awarded to the prominent scientist Edgar H. J. Schuster, a member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council; formerly a Captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery, he served during the Great War in France and at Salonika where he contracted severe malaria

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Civil) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge; 1914-15 Star (Lieut: E. H. J. Schuster. R.G.A.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. E. H. J. Schuster.) mounted for display, extremely fine (4) £200-£260

O.B.E. (Civil) London Gazette 1 January 1947: ‘Edgar Hermann Josepf Schuster, Esq., D.Sc., lately member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council.’

Edgar Hermann Joseph Schuster was born on 18 September 1897. His father, Ernest Schuster, K.C., was a banker, and founded the firm of Schuster Son & Company. Sir Arthur Schuster, F.R.S., Secretary of the Royal Society and Copley Medallist, was an uncle and appears to have been the first scientific member of the family. Educated first at Charterhouse, Edgar won an open scholarship at New College, Oxford, in 1897, taking a B.A. with first class in Natural Science in 1901. He was then awarded a Biological Scholarship by the college and worked under Professor Weldon. In October 1904 Schuster was chosen as the first holder of the Galton Research Fellowship, with Miss E. M. Elderton as his assistant, being financed from the gift by Galton of £1500 to the University of London for three years' furtherance of the study of eugenics. Schuster was elected to a 'fellowship without emolument' at New College, from March 1907, for seven years, a fellowship twice renewed for a similar period, terminating in 1928. In 1908 he was awarded the D.Sc.

In August 1914 he was commissioned into the R.G.A., serving first in France and later on the Staff in Salonika, where he contracted a severe case of malaria. In the summer of 1917 he was seconded by the War Office to the service of the Medical Research Committee (the embryo of the present Medical Research Council); then, upon his transference on grounds of ill-health to the Territorial Reserve, he was employed by the Committee for the duration of the war, and from February 1918 served as Assistant Secretary, responsible particularly for editing the Medical Supplement (a medical abstracting service for the War Office) and the Committee's reports. In the report of the Medical Research Council for 1921-22, the discovery by Schuster of his real vocation emerges. Giving an account of the Publications Department at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hampstead, the report goes on: ‘It happens by a fortunate coincidence that Dr. Edgar Schuster, in charge of the Department, is highly skilled in the arts of mechanical design and construction. He has devised and executed in his spare time many pieces of scientific apparatus for use in the research work of his colleagues, and to some of these reference will be made below. The Council are greatly indebted to him for regular service, beyond his nominal duties, in advising upon the design of all mechanical apparatus constructed in the Institute for work within it or outside.’

Schuster continued until 1930 in the Publications Department, and acted as secretary to the Council's Committees on the Biological Action of Light (1921-29) and on the Legibility of Type (1922-25); and he was appointed sub-editor and press editor of Physiological Abstracts in 1923, for the Physiological Society. But increasingly his ability to construct, with astonishing speed, experimental apparatus for all sorts of biological experiment, came to be used by physiologists and pharmacologists. A small part of this output is reflected in his publications (the last, in the Journal of Physiology with C. G. Phillips, at the age of 80); the greater part was not published, but simply used. After his retirement from the staff of the Medical Research Council, he gave freely of his fertile invention, supreme originality and skilled craftsmanship to the medical scientists nearest his home. To their great good fortune these were the medical scientists of Oxford. Edgar Schuster died on 25 May 1969.