Ray Southwood was born in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains but spent his early life in Kadina, South Australia. He was educated at Prince Alfred College and graduated in medicine at the University of Adelaide in 1916. He enlisted in the AIF during the First World War, becoming a captain in the AAMC. Like so many physicians of his era however, he subsequently spent five years in general practice before embarking on a career in both public health and internal medicine.

Even during his general practice days between 1920 to 1925, he gave honorary service to the Royal Adelaide Hospital both as a biochemist and as an assistant physician in charge of infectious diseases. His greatest contribution to medicine however, has been in public health where he acted for nearly thirty years firstly as a chairman of the Central Board of Health and later as head of the State Health Department. Latterly he was the Director-General of Public Health for South Australia. For twenty-seven years he edited and wrote much of the material for a quarterly bulletin, Good Health for South Australia.

Ray Southwood firmly followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Dr FS Hone in believing that there should be a strong relationship between preventive and clinical medicine. So he became an honorary visiting physician to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It was there that he came into contact with students, both as a physician and in his role as lecturer in public health and preventive medicine over more than twenty years.

I first met him when I was a fifth year medical student and I knew him as a happy, warm and kindly man well known to his students and colleagues by the nickname of `Happy Jack'. This label however gave no clue to the strengths of the man who achieved so much. He had courage; for who else would not have been daunted by his task of writing a book Heart Disease: Some Ways to Prevent it in the early 1960s. It was based on his Milroy lectures in 1959 to the Royal College of Physicians in London on Aspects of Preventive Cardiology. It is a measure of his thoroughness that he went to inordinate pains to seek information for these lectures, not only from international colleges and associations, but also from innumerable eminent physicians of his day throughout the world.

Ray Southwood was a believer in setting one's sights high but he had the compassion and humanity to deal gently with patients, colleagues and students alike. Among his other many achievements have been service as a councillor with the National Health and Medical Research Council for more than twenty years and being chairman of the State Advisory Council on Health and Medical Services for a similar period.

After the First World War he served in the Citizen Military Forces, becoming a lieutenant-colonel and CO of a field ambulance. During the Second World War he became a full colonel and was DDMS for South Australia 1940-42. He was awarded the Efficiency Decoration in 1937.

It was a measure of his interest in the welfare of people that he was instrumental, as a result of a letter to an Adelaide newspaper, in the launching of the `Father Adelaide Christmas Fund' in 1923 to provide Christmas presents to every child in SA's public hospitals, institutions and orphanages. This has continued beyond his death for more than fifty years. For his work with the St John Ambulance Brigade he was awarded the distinction of serving brother of the Order of St John.

Ray Southwood also had a great interest in schools. He was elected to the council of governors of the Presbyterian Girls' College in 1936 and served in that capacity for nearly thirty years. For part of that time he was medical officer to the School. He was a family man and he gave credit to his wife Elva for her support and inspiration over many years. Four children survive, including a son who is director of orthopaedic surgery at Flinders Medical Centre and a daughter married to another Fellow of the College, David Dunn, who is also a visiting physician to Royal Adelaide Hospital.