Jim Petrie died shortly after demitting office as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and before the full potential of his professional work could be realised. A native of Aberdeenshire and a medical graduate in 1964 of Aberdeen University, part of his schooling was in Geneva and his fluent French allowed him to make a unique contribution to European medicine. His academic career was as a lecturer, reader and professor of therapeutics and clinical pharmacology at Aberdeen and at the age of 29 he was the youngest honorary consultant in Scotland. His research work was mainly in pharmacokinetic studies of drugs and in drug metabolism. He was a champion of problem oriented medical records and of evidence-based medicine. He was the founding chairman of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN).