Graduate’s ancestor was UofL president

Brock, a graduating medical student speaking at UofL’s May 10 afternoon commencement ceremony, is a descendant of James Guthrie, the university’s second president.

In 1836, Guthrie, a Jefferson County delegate to Kentucky’s House of Representatives, encouraged several Transylvania University faculty members to move to Louisville and start Louisville Medical School. A decade later, the school merged with Louisville Collegiate Institute and a newly created law school to become the University of Louisville.

Guthrie held UofL’s top job from 1847 to 1869, a period including the Civil War. For part of that time, he also was U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin Pierce.

The namesake of Guthrie Street in downtown Louisville, he created a board of health and free public schools in Louisville, played a key role in helping Louisville gain status as a city, helped found the State Bank of Kentucky and was president of Louisville & Nashville railroad.

Brock, a Louisville native, graduated from DuPont Manual High School in 2004.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in neural science and philosophy from New York University in 2008 and is receiving a medical degree and master of arts degree in bioethics and medical humanities from UofL this spring.

“I consider myself part of a proud Louisville tradition,” Brock said. 

In June, Brock begins a medical residency at Children’s Hospital Colorado and at University of Colorado in Denver. He will talk in his commencement speech about the people who have influenced his life, he said.