Born in 1910, Francis Rundle was educated in Newcastle and graduated from Sydney University Medical School with first class honours and the University Medal in 1932. During his early training in the competitive environment of the university hospitals in London, he won the Jacksonian Prize of the College for his thesis on thyroid disease - a field in which he developed an international reputation. As Rockefeller Travelling Fellow to Harvard and Johns Hopkins Hospital, he became enthused by the American university hospital system and its dedication to clinical research. He returned as assistant to Sir James Paterson Ross at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and in 1950 went back to Sydney as honorary assistant surgeon at Sydney's newest teaching hospital, Royal North Shore Hospital, while simultaneously running a large private clinic in Macquarie Street. At the Royal North Shore Hospital he broke new ground by establishing a unit of clinical investigation, one of the first hospital units to promote active research by practising clinicians. He was successful in obtaining a substantial grant from the Wellcome Foundation to build laboratories for experimental surgery and medicine. Rundle was the foundation Dean of the newly created medical school at the University of New South Wales in 1959 and Professor of Surgery, leading the new medical faculty through countless initial difficulties to become one of the larger medical faculties in Australia. He accomplished the upgrading of Prince Henry Hospital, developing its clinical sciences building to house the first clinical academic departments. He participated in the development of the Prince of Wales Hospital and its children's hospital, and negotiated the inclusion of St Vincent's and St George's Hospitals and the Royal Hospital for Women in the teaching facilities of the medical faculty. Rundle was dedicated to the project of educational reform in the medical faculty and, with the conviction that learning was far more productive with clinical responsibility, developed his plan for a shortened undergraduate curriculum followed by two years of graduate education. After retiring as Dean in 1973, Rundle formed the Centre for Medical Education Research, with the support of the World Health Organization. Rundle was warmly admired by those who knew him best for his enthusiasm, energy, loyalty and vision. The rapid growth of clinical research by staff jointly accredited by hospitals and universities has become commonplace, and the thrust for continuing reform in medical education will go on through the influence of centres for research in medical education like the one he founded. He died in December 1993, survived by his wife Peggy and two sons, Julian, a business executive, and Patrick, an otolaryngologist in Sydney.