James Alexander Scott Dickson was a consultant paediatric surgeon at Sheffield Children’s Hospital (SCH). He was born in Nairobi, Kenya on 24 March 1931. His father, Walter Scott Dickson, was headmaster of a Church of Scotland mission school in Tumutumu and his mother was Isa née Nicol. During his early years he was educated at home and then, when he was six years old, the family returned to Scotland specifically to arrange his education. He was to stay with an aunt, a community paediatrician, and attend Paisley Grammar School, while his parents and baby brother Hector returned to Kenya. In the normal course of events, his family would have returned on leave in 1943, but everything changed with the outbreak of the second world war and he was not to see his parents again for ten years. In 1947, at the age of 16, he was accepted to read medicine at Glasgow University. His parents returned from Africa with his ten year old brother and his father joined him at the university as a divinities student. He graduated MB, ChB in 1953, and worked in Glasgow until being called up for national service. He joined the Royal Air Force, and served as a flight lieutenant, working as a family doctor, in Aden, Egypt and Cyprus. When he was demobilised he worked as senior house officer in Glasgow and at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. He later worked as an anatomy demonstrator at Edinburgh University until he joined the Glasgow surgical registrar rotation in 1959. He was based in Dumfries in 1960 and then at Yorkhill Hospital, Glasgow, passing the fellowship of the college in 1961 and of the Edinburgh college the previous year. In 1962 he and his wife travelled to Ibadan in Nigeria for one year, where he worked as senior registrar in general and paediatric surgery under Will Davey. After a spell back in Scotland, in 1965 he joined the staff of Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London under Andrew Wilkinson, as senior registrar and later resident assistant surgeon. Four years later he accepted a two-year consultant post in Uganda with the aim of developing a paediatric service in Kampala. He and his wife and their young family left for Africa only to return a year later in 1970, when he was appointed to the senior lecturer post at the Institute of Child Health plus honorary consultant in paediatric surgery at GOSH. This was a fortunate change of plan for the family as they only missed Idi Amin’s military coup in Uganda by three months. After ten years in London, he was appointed consultant paediatric surgeon at the SCH and began to specialise in paediatric gastroenterological surgery. He developed a reputation for his meticulous attention to detail, as well as for his care and compassion for his patients and their families. He had become friendly with Andrew Pinter when they were both working at GOSH and they continued a fruitful professional association when Pinter was appointed professor of surgery at the Children’s Hospital in Pécs, Hungary. Numerous trainee surgeons from Pécs spent time as registrars in Sheffield and returned to Hungary to become professors and consultants. As an examiner, he worked for the Royal College of Physicians on the diploma of child health and for the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He also served on the committee of the British Association of Paediatric Surgery(BAPS) and started a charity to support the families of those with tracheo-oesophageal fistula (TOFS). After retiring from surgery in 1996, he returned to being a demonstrator in anatomy at the University of Sheffield for five years. He also contributed greatly by continuing to serve SCH on the planning and refurbishment committee for a projected major hospital refurbishment. In his leisure hours, he enjoyed photography and playing chess. Soon after arriving in Sheffield he had been appointed an Elder of St. Andrew’s United Reformed Church, Church of Scotland and, after retirement, he served as church secretary and edited *The Messenger*, their monthly magazine. He had met his wife Jean née Walker while working in Dumfries in 1960. She was a surgical house officer at the time and apparently they encountered each other when she observed him pinning a femur. They married the following year and adopted two children Graeme (born 1965) and Rosie (born 1967). He died on 26 January 2021 aged 89 and was survived by his wife, children and grandchildren, Callum and Alex.