Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet

Born in Nantwich, Cheshire, he was third son of John Eddowes Bowman, a banker and botanist, and his wife Elizabeth Eddowes. The scholar Eddowes Bowman and the architect Henry Bowman were his elder brothers.^[1]

Bowman attended Hazelwood School near Birmingham from 1826.^[2] He was apprenticed first at age 16, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, to W. A. Betts at Birmingham;^[1] this may in fact have been Henry Augustus Betts, MRCS in 1832, in Birmingham in his early career, before moving to Stourbridge.^[3] He was then under Joseph Hodgson, also at Birmingham General Hospital, in 1832.^[2] He also assisted Peyton Blakiston FRS on research to measure the orifices of the heart. Blakiston gave him a microscope made by Hugh Powell.^[4]

In 1837 Bowman left Birmingham in 1837 to further his training as a surgeon and attended King's College London. There he served as a prosector under Robert Bentley Todd, a Professor of physiology.

After completing his surgical training in 1844, Bowman practised as an ophthalmologist at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (later known as Moorfields Eye Hospital). He was an early user of the ophthalmoscope invented by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1851.^[2] Between 1848 and 1855, he also taught at King's College. In 1880, he founded the 'Ophthalmological Society', which later became the Royal College of Ophthalmologists.

In 1870 he commissioned Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb to rebuild Joldwynds, Bowman's house in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey. It was completed in 1874.^[5]

In 1884, Queen Victoria created him as a baronet.^[6] He died at Joldwynds on 29 March 1892, and is buried in the neighbouring churchyard of Holmbury St. Mary.^[7] A memorial to him lies within St James's Church, Piccadilly.

Bowman's earliest notable work was on the structure of striated muscle, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1841.^[2] At the age of 25, he identified what then became known as Bowman's capsule, a key component of the nephron. He presented his findings in 1842 in his paper "On the Structure and Use of the Malpighian Bodies of the Kidney" to the Royal Society and was awarded the Royal Medal. His collaboration with Todd led to the publication of the five-volume "Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man" (1843–1856) and "Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology" (1852), which detailed their research on microscopy and histology, relating minute anatomical observations to physiological functions. Their extensive use of the microscopes revolutionized the study of anatomy and physiology. Apart from the Bowman's capsule, other anatomical structures named after him include:

• Bowman's glands – in the olfactory mucosa
• Bowman's layer – the anterior limiting layer in the cornea

On 28 December 1842, Bowman married Harriet, fifth daughter of Thomas Paget of Leicester, by whom he had seven children. She died at Joldwynds on 25 October 1900. He was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, Sir Paget Bowman.^[7]