The Lumleian Lectures are a series of annual lectures started in 1582 by the Royal College of Physicians and later run by the Lumleian Trust. The name commemorates John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley, who with Richard Caldwell of the College endowed the lectures, initially confined to surgery, but expanded to cover general medicine. William Harvey did not announce his work on the circulation of the blood in the Lumleian Lecture for 1616 although he had some notes on the heart and blood which led to the discovery of the circulation ten years later. By that time ambitious plans for a full anatomy course based on weekly lectures had been scaled back to a lecture three times a year.

Initially the appointment of the Lumleian lecturer was for life, later reduced to five years, and since 1825 made annually, although for some years it was awarded for two years in succession.