Edgar North was born near Hobart but lived as a child in Launceston where he attended Launceston Grammar School. His parents, Alexander and Lucie (nee Morgan) contributed significantly to Tasmanian architecture. Although excelling in English studies he entered medicine at Melbourne University, residing in Trinity College. He interrupted his studies to join the First AIF and with 38 Battalion from 1916 to 1919 saw service in France. He re-entered medicine in 1920, graduated in 1923 and continued at the Alfred Hospital as a resident through 1924. In that year he married Jean Andrew. After an introduction to psychiatry at Sunbury Hospital he served as a medical officer at the Repatriation Mental Hospital, Bundoora from 1925 to 1928 and also during those years was a clinical assistant and outpatients’ physician at the Alfred Hosiptal.

Dr North joined the Commonwealth Health Service on 18 May 1928 and remained there for the rest of his professional life. For the first ten years, after an introductory period at Port Pirie, he was medical officer in charge of the Commonwealth Health Laboratories at Rockhampton (from 1929) and later (1935) at Bendigo. In 1938 he transferred to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories at Parkville, Victoria and in 1950 became, as a deputy director, the chief of the research division. He succeeded Dr EV Keogh who incidentally had also joined the laboratories division on 18 May 1928.

His contributions to important health advances were many. He was actively involved in the large scale manufacture of tetanus toxoid which was of critical importance for the immunisation of World War II servicemen and women. He was also engaged in smallpox vaccine manufacture during those years. However his major contributions were with experimental pertussis which led to pertussis immunisation, staphylococcal toxins and development of BCG vaccine. He published over forty papers in these areas.

An avid reader and regular attender at orations and lectures, Edgar was seen by his CSL colleagues as an erudite and courtly gentleman. To some he was the archetypical ‘absent-minded professor’. A then young scientist who knew him retains a vivid memory of Edgar driving his motor car, at its usual sedate pace, for several hundred yards along the footpath after leaving CSL, obviously engrossed in some intellectual problem and blissfully unaware that he was not on the road.

As an ex-serviceman he valued the work of Legacy and gave it much of his leisure time, as he also did to his church. On retirement he returned to Tasmania and energetically developed his horticultural activities. He was a pioneer of trickle irrigation on a commercial scale. He died in 1970 and was survived by his wife and three sons, one of whom, John, has made a particular contribution to the development of community medical practice and the affairs of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.