Who among a generation of medical students can forget the infectious enthusiasm, dedication and smiling courtesy of this tall, handsome, friendly man, this `genial apostle of health living'? Who can match the extraordinary diversity of his talents, as academic, Rhodes Scholar, Olympic (800 m, 1908, London) athlete, prolific writer and public speaker, community leader and founder of modern public health and preventive medicine in Australia?

Youngest of eight children of an East Anglian migrant in the 1850s, Harvey Sutton was born in Bendigo, where his father was gaol warden, and brought up in Castlemaine, Victoria. After graduation with honours in every subject and the Beaney Prize for pathology, from Melbourne University in 1902, Harvey Sutton served for two years as resident at the Children's Hospital, Melbourne, a time during which he became the first Australian medical recipient of the Rhodes scholarship. After graduating MD (Melbourne) he took up residence in New College, Oxford, in 1906. He gained a science degree there in climatic physiology under the direction of JS Haldane, and was influenced there also by Sir William Osler towards a career in public health and preventive medicine. His path was later confirmed by Sir Charles Martin, with whom he spent some time at the Lister Institute in London, after a residency in Charing Cross Hospital. So, on his return to Melbourne he gained the DPH and joined the Victorian Education Department.

Harvey Sutton's war service with the Australian Light Horse from 1915 to 1919 in Sinai, Palestine and Syria was distinguished by his pioneer work in field hygiene and in the prevention of malaria and dysentery, for which he was awarded the OBE and twice mentioned in dispatches. His service was marked also by his survival of two torpedoings near Alexandria.

After the War, Harvey Sutton became principal medical officer of the Education Department in Sydney for nine years, during which he was also part-time lecturer in public health and preventive medicine in the University of Sydney. When the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was founded there in 1930 he became its first director and foundation professor of preventive medicine, positions he held till his retirement in 1947.

The bare bones of a curriculum vitae, even one so distinguished as Harvey Sutton's, do nothing to bring alive the remarkable warmth and humanity of the man and the richness of the life. Though as his student, one recalls the enthusiasm with which he presented the delights of the traditional environmental hygiene aspects of public health, his heart was more in the social and community aspects, in which he was the initiator and guiding light in Australia. Thus he actively promoted health education, mental health, sex education, marriage guidance, child health, anti-delinquency and anti-alcohol programmes, sports medicine, physical fitness, dental health and the epidemiology of infectious disease. He took public health and preventive medicine out of the ivory tower and into the community, having founded or been executively associated with many voluntary health bodies. These included the National Fitness Council, the Life Saving Association of Australia, the Family Planning Association, Legacy, the Father and Son Welfare Movement and the Royal Society of New South Wales. He founded Health Week in 1921. Further than these associations, he carried his ideas to the public, missing no opportunity to give public addresses, which he delivered with lively anecdote and humour.

As if all this were not enough - he worked long hours and was always on the run - Harvey Sutton had a wide range of personal interests in which he engaged with the same enthusiasm and high endeavour. He retained a lifelong interest and involvement in sporting bodies; retained also an interest in archaeology stimulated in Palestine during the First World War; became an avid collector of books (an interest developed by browsing in the old bookshops in Charing Cross Road when at the Hospital) and a medical historian; was keen on gardening, and designed a sunken garden in the School grounds; and became an expert in the science and practice of boomerang and aboriginal spear throwing, designing and making his own boomerangs, and maintaining a collection.

The picture is still not complete without the image and style of the man. Picture the boyish enthusiasm with which he demonstrated the boomerang in front of the School or at congresses and other public gatherings; or with which he paraded at University Oval, stethoscope, stopwatch and physiological gear at the ready. Picture the practitioner of what he preached on exercise and relaxation, catnapping even while chairing a meeting; his registrar at the School had to check his diary after lunch to ensure he was on deck for engagements or would not be found asleep by a visitor. Picture him in his office surrounded by books and papers piled high on every available surface, including chairs and floor. Picture him as `a man of good will' who `always appeared at peace with the world'.

Harvey Sutton's family life was also practised as preached. He had seven children, one of whom, David, has long been in medical practice at Cloncurry, Queensland.