Born 25 March 1886 at Blackford, Perthshire, the third child and second son of John Lawson, banker, and Lillias J Sharp, his wife. He went to school at Crieff Academy and then entered Edinburgh University, where he graduated in arts and later took first-class honours in medicine. He served as house surgeon to Sir Harold Stiles at the Royal Infirmary, house surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, and demonstrator in anatomy and assistant in the pathological department at the University. He was also for a time Stiles's private assistant. He served next as medical superintendent and resident surgical officer in the Dreadnought Hospital, Greenwich. During the first world war Lawson served as a temporary surgeon in the Royal Navy 1914-18, and took the English Fellowship 1916, though not previously a Member of the College, after postgraduate study at St Bartholomew's Hospital. After the war he worked with Sir Robert Jones at Liverpool, and in 1919 settled in practice at Leicester, where he was elected surgeon to the Royal Infirmary and became consulting surgeon to Carlton Hayes Hospital. He instituted the Infirmary's orthopaedic and fracture service. Lawson was president of the Leicestershire and Rutland branch of the British Medical Association, and an original member of the Provincial Surgical Club, acting for two years as its secretary. He was equally interested in general surgery and in orthopaedics. Lawson married in 1916 Elsie M Hunting, who survived him, but without children. He had an attack of coronary thrombosis before the outbreak of the second world war in 1939, but returned to his work and was active throughout the six busy war years. He died at Milton Hayes, Manor Road, Leicester on 27 May 1945, and was buried at Knighton after a funeral service at St Peter's, Highfields, Leicester. He had practised at 230 and 240 London Road, Leicester. A predecessor as surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, Claude Douglas, died within a fortnight of Lawson's death. Lawson was a man of courteous friendship and hospitality. Publication: Latent adrenal tuberculosis with subacute adrenal insufficiency. *J Roy Nav med Serv* 1915, 1, 329.