Edgar Frederick Thomson was born in Invercargill, New Zealand where he attended Southland Boys High School. Graduating in 1936 from the Otago University Medical School and completing his intern year in Dunedin Hospital he spent a year in country general practice in the small Otago town of Owaka. He returned to a post in the pathology department of the medical school, under Professor Murray Drennan after whom his first son was later named. In June 1929 he became assistant pathologist in Christchurch Hospital, and that year married Nell Latta of Owaka. In 1933 Edgar Thomson left New Zealand to head the Department of Bacteriology (including haematology) at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. Except for a period from 1937 to 1939 in Christchurch, Australia was to be his home for the rest of his life.

Edgar Thomson's easy manner and ability to relate to people of all ages is illustrated by a recollection of Sir Keith Jones. Sir Keith was one of a group of medical students at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1933 approached by an active looking man aged about thirty, wearing spectacles, who introduced himself as Edgar Thomson, a New Zealander, and a new appointee to the hospital. He said he was a complete stranger to the staff of the hospital and felt that the future doctors were the people he would like to know first.

Professor RJ Walsh (qv), at one time director of the NSW Blood Transfusion Service, recalled as a student seeing Edgar Thomson carrying a little fibrelite box marked "Blood Transfusion" around the hospital. Thomson had become interested in and enthusiastic about what was then a rare procedure. Under his guidance it developed into an important service in the hospital. His commitment to blood transfusion services continued throughout his life. At the beginning of World War II he became a founding member of the NSW Blood Transfusion Committee and on return from war service overseas joined the National Blood Transfusion Committee, and was its chairman from 1947 until 1969. In Professor Walsh's view,

a lot of the credit for the present status and activities of the transfusion service throughout Australia is unquestionably due to Edgar Thomson.

He was dedicated to pathology in all its aspects, demanding a high standard of performance from himself and from others - when necessary doing the benchwork himself. His intensity of application is illustrated by the daunting task of blood-grouping the 25,700 members of the 6th Division of the AIF in the period between Boxing Day 1939 and New Years Day 1940 before their embarkation for the Middle East. He organised volunteers to work the long hours necessary and the task was eventually completed with him doing 7000 of the groupings.

He did not favour "ivory tower" pathology and when he became director of the Fairfax Institute encouraged specialist staff members to become members of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians by examination. He himself was a foundation fellow of the College, a member of the NSW State Committee from 1952 to 1964, Chairman of the Business Committee of Australian Annals of Medicine for some years.

Edgar Thomson enlisted in the AIF in 1940, serving in the Middle East, Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Initially he was pathologist to the 2nd/5th Australian General Hospital. After appointments as OC No6 Mobile Bacteriology Laboratory RAMC and OC No103 Australian Mobile Bacteriological Laboratory AIF he became assistant director of hygiene, pathology and entomology at the Medical Directorate at Land Headquarters in 1943 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, a position he held until 1946. It was in this latter appointment that Major General Sir William Refshauge first met him, when he was attached in May 1945 to Sir William's Field Ambulance in the 9th Australian Division at Morotai, as an observer for the landings at Labuan and Brunei, Borneo. Sir William later wrote:

As our equipment was scaled down for an amphibious operation Edgar Thomson had to share my tent, and I soon found this paragon of bacteriology was a delightful companion, a ready listener, and a wonderful counsellor. He had a wealth of knowledge far beyond the limits of bacteriology, pathology, or indeed medicine as a whole... His advice was always direct, frank and clear; it was always practical and full of commonsense.

Following his discharge Edgar Thomson was appointed Director of Pathology Services, Fairfax Institute of Pathology, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, a post he held until 1958, and resumed teaching as a lecturer in clinical laboratory medicine at the University of Sydney, a position he held from 1939 to 1958. Many students in the immediate postwar years had their first exposure to him as a short, forceful figure dressed in khaki, in the laboratories of the "New Med School" expounding theatrically on fungi. In 1958, on persuasion of Sir Herbert Schlink, a long term friend whom he greatly admired, he accepted appointment as general superintendent and chief executive officer of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where his flair for organisation was applied, and often sorely tested. Although it meant relinquishing the practice of his beloved speciality he never regretted the decision and threw himself into the position which he held until 1967, with energy and enthusiasm.

At an age when many others would be considering retirement he became secretary general of the Australian Medical Association in 1967, occupying the position through a period of considerable medico-political turmoil associated with a major restructuring of health insurance in 1970. Sir William Refshauge who was Director General of Health at the time later wrote:

It is a tremendous tribute to Edgar Thomson that these difficult problems were, at least, kept in reasonable perspective if not completely resolved, and a grave confrontation between the profession and the Government was avoided... the medical profession in Australia owes a great deal to Dr Thomson's stewardship at that particular time.

On his retirement from the AMA secretariat in 1972 he became honorary director of the Postgraduate Committee in Medical Education, University of NSW, where he regarded his own attendance at all postgraduate events as mandatory. After convalescence following radical oesophagectomy he insisted on returning to the university for a period of a little over a year. He died in Gloucester House after a protracted terminal illness. A simple chronology of Edgar Thomson's professional career cannot do justice to the extent of the service he gave to medicine and the community in many important areas. The following are among his many other achievements.

He was one of the founding fathers and the first president of the College of Pathologists (now the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia) from 1955 to 1957. In 1969 the College made him an honorary fellow and in 1977, on an unanimous resolution of an Annual General Meeting two weeks before his death, struck a Gold Medal to commemorate his outstanding and meritorious service. He was advised of this honour but did not live to receive it. As a special adviser to the College Executive, from 1972 to his death, unforeseen implications and complications never escaped his critical scrutiny and he introduced a new level of diplomacy into executive decisions and activities.

His concerns, early in the days of antibiotic use, about antibiotic resistance will be vividly remembered by many residents summoned to his office to justify their actions. At that time some learned a lesson in dealing with Edgar - that, despite the bluster, if you stood your ground and argued your case well you earned his respect and established a good relationship with him. His interest in antibiotics led to his appointment as a member, and later chairman, of the Antibiotic Advisory Committee of the NHMRC from 1963 to 1967.

In 1963 he became the first chairman of the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee, a post he held until he became secretary general of the AMA. From 1966 until just before his death he was chairman of the standing committee of the Central Medical Planning Committee, the body responsible for developing plans for the management of mass casualties after a major disaster. He was a member of the NSW Branch Council of the British Medical Association, later the AMA, from 1948 to 1961, president of the Branch from 1956 to 1957, NSW representative on the Federal Council from 1956 to 1965, and was made a fellow of the AMA in 1965.

After World War II he was first commanding officer, with the rank of colonel, of 1st General Hospital CMF; from 1957 until 1967 was deputy director of medical services, Eastern Command; was appointed honorary surgeon to Her Majesty the Queen from 1959 to 1962; and from 1967 to 1970 was Honorary Colonel, RAAMC, Eastern Command. He was one of the founders of the Australian Hospital Association serving from 1958 to 1967 as its first honorary secretary, and was a member of the International Hospital Federation over the same period. He was Officer Brother of the Order of St John (1965) and Commander in the St John's Ambulance Brigade NSW from 1965 to 1969. Although too busy to publish many papers he, with Dr WC Sayers, was the first to describe cryptococcosis in Australia.

As a long time member of the Rotary Club of South Sydney and its president from 1959 to 1960 he was involved, quietly and unobtrusively, in many personal acts of community service. To his great disappointment illness forced him to step down from the position of District Governor Nominee. In recognition of his outstanding involvement in the work of the Salvation Army, and with the support of the Rotary Club, an extended nursery facility at the William Booth Institute, Darlinghurst - the Edgar Thomson Memorial Ward - was dedicated on 16 May 1978 when Dr JR (later Sir Rupert) Magarey summed up the man very simply:

Dr Thomson will be remembered for the energy, enthusiasm, skill and devotion with which he applied his outstanding abilities to the welfare of the community.