James George Edwards, ‘JG’ to his professional colleagues and ‘Tommy’ to his family and friends, was born at Gordon, NSW, of a pioneer family. His great grandfather, Robert Pymble, arrived in NSW in 1821 and farmed a grant of six hundred acres in the area which is now the suburb of Pymble. His father, the first headmaster at Gordon School, owned land at Killara and was influential in the building of the north shore railway from Milson’s Point to Hornsby.

JG was educated at Sydney Grammar School and Sydney University. He graduated in medicine in 1906 coming fifth in his year. He was appointed to Sydney Hospital in 1907 and became resident skiagraphist in 1908, his first introduction to radiology. He was acting superintendent in 1909 and went into general practice in 1910. His pioneer progenitors would have approved when late in 1910 he installed x-ray apparatus in rooms in College Street and began his career as a diagnostic specialist. In 1913 he moved to Macquarie Street, where he remained until he retired from active practice in 1955.

He was appointed honorary radiologist at Sydney Hospital in 1914 and held this position until he reached the retiring age of sixty in 1944. In the first half of this century radiologists were thin on the ground and JG served on the honorary staff, literal words in those days, of many hospitals. Prince Henry, Lewisham, St Vincent’s, Manly, Marrickville and South Sydney were all attended in the course of a working week. Films from distant country hospitals came to the rooms in Craignish for reporting, and trips to country centres were quite frequent. He was a member of the Silicosis Commission of NSW, now the Dust Diseases Board, for thirty years and its chairman for thirteen years.

During the First World War he served the Army as a radiologist at Holsworthy and kept up his hospital work and practice. In 1918 his younger brother Will returned from service at the Royal Australian Naval College and joined him in the practice. In 1925 this enabled JG to spend six months at the Mayo Clinic and some months in London.

In 1935 he actively supported the formation of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Radiology, now the Royal Australasian College of Radiologists and was a signatory of its articles of association.

He married in 1913, a happy union which lasted until his death. The marriage produced one son, killed piloting a Spitfire during a raid on St Nazaire in 1942, and two daughters. The elder, Jean Edwards (Mrs George Read) trained in radiology and joined her father in Macquarie Street during the Second World War. She continued in radiological practice until her retirement in 1982.

JG was a rapid and accurate observer with great facility in separating images into normal and abnormal categories. His reports were laconic and astute. I remember on one occasion a request for a radiographic examination listing six questions posed by a rather long-winded colleague. The report read ‘No’s 1-6, No.’ Disappointing but true.

JG regarded himself as a physician skilled in radiology and not as a narrow specialist. He was always interested in the patient’s welfare in the broad sense and this made his opinion more valuable to the discerning. He was a shrewd judge of referring physicians and I remember the case of a prominent citizen who came for a barium meal when duodenal ulcer was a fashionable complaint; JG found no evidence of an ulcer and remarked to me as he wrote the report, ‘John should have sent him to X’, naming another radiologist, ‘he would have found an ulcer for him’. Sure enough we heard later that this had happened; treatment fortunately was simple and successful.

JG was in good health and physically active throughout his life. He played tennis into his seventies and was a keen skier from pioneer times at Kiandra until he was sixty. He swam, fished and gardened until his death which came quietly in his sleep in 1963.