Professor Jannie Louw was born on 26 May 1915 in Middleburg, South Africa, the son of a schoolmaster who later became a school inspector. He was educated at Rondebosch High School in Cape Town and the University of Cape Town Medical School, where he graduated in 1938 with distinction. After junior appointments in the newly-opened Groote Schuur Hospital and a short spell in general practice, he joined the South African Medical Corps and served with the 8th army in North Africa from 1941 to 1945 with the rank of captain, escaping from Tobruk when it was besieged. In 1943 he married Cathy van Breda, a nurse at Groote Schuur Hospital. Their first son died from congenital intestinal atresia, and this stimulated his subsequent interest in paediatric surgery and this condition in particular. He took his MCh degree in 1946, and was then appointed assistant surgeon at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town. He won a Nuffield Dominion Travelling Fellowship to Europe in 1951 and worked for much of that time at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. He was appointed associate professor at the University of Cape Town in 1954 and a year later to the chair of surgery there. He was also surgeon-in-chief at Groote Schuur Hospital and the Red Cross Children's Hospital, posts which he held for the next 26 years. Jannie Louw was the founder of paediatric surgery in South Africa, and he was also instrumental in establishing the various surgical specialties as independent entities, with their own departmental heads. He became world-renowned as a clinician, teacher, researcher and administrator, and he received numerous honorary degrees and awards from overseas universities and colleges, including all the English-speaking colleges. He was also President of the College of Medicine of South Africa for two terms, and a member of the South African Medical Research Council. He delivered the Moynihan Lecture to the College in 1959, and was awarded the Dennis Brown Gold Medal of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons. The South African Decoration of Meritorious Service was awarded to him by the state president in 1980. He was also a medical historian of note and in 1969 he published *In the shadow of Table Mountain*, recording the history of the University of Cape Town Medical School. Tireless and immensely hard-working, he inspired many generations of surgeons and nurses by the high standards of treatment of children under his care, but woe betide anyone who let those standards slip! He retired in 1980 but carried on his many interests, including foreign travel. Cathy, his wife and staunchest supporter, died in 1991, and when he died on 7 May 1992 after a short illness, he was survived by his three children, Robert, Katherine and Eleanor.