Obituary: Professor Ian Richardson, 88

PROFESSOR Ian Richardson, one of the most respected and influential UK professors of general practice, has died at the age of 88.

Ian Richardson was born on April 3, 1922 in Edinburgh. After qualifying with honours in Edinburgh in 1944, his early career ambitions in surgery were frustrated by a severe skin allergy. Instead he turned his skills to education and spent more than a decade as a lecturer and then reader of public health and social medicine in Aberdeen.

There he developed his vision of community-based teaching, establishing contacts for medical students in local general practices.

He also proved popular while practising as a GP in Portlethen, where he gained a group of patients who would see no-one else but him.

In 1970, he became the professor of general practice at Aberdeen University.

Professor Richardson was acknowledged as one of the most acute and analytic intellects in academic general practice. After he retired in 1984, he continued to work as a summariser of patients' notes with his local practice in Auchterarder.

As a Justice of the Peace, he was committed to the work of the Juvenile Court.

He was said to be devoted to his family and his wife, Mary. He died on December 16 in Dumfries.