Arthur Cushny (1866–1926) was the first holder of the newly instituted Chair of Pharmacology, from 1905 until 1918.
After graduating in medicine from Aberdeen, Cushny had studied in Berne, Würzburg, and Strasbourg, where he became Assistant to the famed Oswald Schmiedeberg. In 1893, at the age of 27, he was appointed Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Eight years later Cushny came to the chair at UCL where he soon expanded the department from the single room he had been given. He raised the funds for the building which the remnants of the department still occupies.
His main interests were in the heart and kidney. His work on the involvement of calcium in the action of digitalis was prescient.  He was interested in optical isomers. Data from an early clinical trial using hyoscine isomers was used by William Sealy Gossett who, under the pseudonym "Student" published in 1908 the first small-sample test of significance, Students t' test. His use of these data has given rise to much discussion. Later reanalysis of the same data by a randomisation tests gave a similar result.
Cushny published a textbook Textbook of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (eighth edition 1924). He introduced the Cushny myograph, an ingenious  arrangement of  counterbalanced levers that allowed the faithful recording of the rate and force of contraction of the rapidly beating animal heart. It was still in use in practical classes at UCL, and elsewhere, in the 1960s.
Cushny left UCL in 1918, to become Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacology at Edinburgh. he was succeeded by A.J. Clark/