James Dixon was an ENT surgeon in Glasgow and later Devon. He was born on 28 September 1921 in Trong, Perak, Malaya, where his father, William John Dixon, was working as a doctor. His mother was Grace Gertrude née Holmes. He was educated at St Peter’s, Exmouth, and Epsom College, from which he went to University College Hospital with an entrance scholarship. There he was much influenced by Gwynne Williams, Myles Formby, Gavin Livingstone and Ronald Macbeth. On qualifying he did his house jobs at University College Hospital, Hampstead General Hospital, the Postgraduate Medical School Hammersmith and the Royal Ear Hospital. He served in the RAMC from 1946 to 1948, reaching the rank of major. He returned to University College Hospital as a registrar and senior registrar, specialising in ENT. He was a senior registrar at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, before being appointed surgeon in charge of the ENT department, at the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, in 1959, with the honorary position of lecturer in otolaryngology. In 1970 he moved to Devon, as a consultant for the Devon and Exeter clinical area, based at Torbay Hospital. He published articles on acute otitis media in children, carcinoma of the larynx and solitary neurilemmomata. Dixon was honorary secretary of the section of laryngology of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1966 to 1968 and a member of the council of the British Association of Otolaryngologists from 1970. Whilst in Glasgow he examined for the final FRCS in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Ireland. He married a Miss McCay in 1955, and had three sons and a daughter. He died suddenly on 6 April 2003. Neil Weir