Born in Arbroath, Ronald Girdwood attended Daniel Stewart's College and graduated in Edinburgh as the Ettles Scholar of his year in 1939. It was perhaps chance and the uncertainties of wartime service that led him into haematology in which he became pre-eminent. His undergraduate ambition was to be a neurosurgeon, but posted in the Royal Army Medical Corps to India and Burma, he was asked to investigate marasmus and anaemia in British and Indian troops. This led to work on megaloblastic anaemias which he pursued after the war as a Rockefeller Research Fellow at the University of Michigan and then at the Department of Medicine at Edinburgh with his former chief and mentor Sir Stanley Davidson. His academic career progressed to his appointment as Professor of Therapeutics and then Dean of the Faculty.