Ian Hembrow is a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK. Since 2016, he has been involved in research and writing about global medicines safety (pharmacovigilance), especially the monitoring work carried out on behalf of the World Health Organization at the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) in Sweden. His 2018 book MAKING MEDICINES SAFER told the 40-year history of UMC, following which he was commissioned to write this account of the life and career of its founding director, Ralph Edwards.