Edward Jenner FRS (May 17, 1749 – January 26, 1823) was an English country doctor who studied nature and his natural surroundings from childhood and practiced medicine in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. He is famous as the first doctor to introduce and study the smallpox vaccine. Jenner trained in Sodbury, Gloucestershire as an apprentice to Dr. Ludlow for 8 years from the age of 13, then went up to London in 1770 to study under the surgeon John Hunter (a noted experimentalist, and later a fellow of the Royal Society^*) and others at St George's Hospital. William Osler records that Jenner was a student to whom Hunter repeated William Harvey's advice, very famous in medical circles, "Don't think, try". Jenner therefore was early noticed by men famous for advancing the practice and institutions of medicine, and Hunter remained in correspondence with him over natural history and proposed him for the Royal Society. Returning to his native countryside, by 1773 he became a successful general practitioner and surgeon, practicing in purpose-built premises at Berkeley.

Jenner and others formed a medical society in Rodborough, Gloucestershire, meeting to read papers on medical subjects and dine together. Jenner contributed papers on angina pectoris, ophthalmia and valvular disease of the heart and commented on cowpox. He also belonged to a similar society which met in Alveston, near Bristol.Papers at the Royal College of Physicians summarised at http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=7135&inst_id=8

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1788, following a careful study combining observation, experiment and dissection into a description of the previously misunderstood life of the cuckoo in the nest.