My friend and former boss Bill (William) Duncan, who has died aged 93, was one of the outstanding academic oncologists of his era, and, save for a five-year period spent in Toronto, held the post of professor of radiation oncology at the University of Edinburgh from 1971 until his retirement in 1995.
From an early point at Edinburgh he cultivated unusually close links with the surgeons working there, and those relationships brought about joint clinics and joint theatre sessions, prefiguring the multidisciplinary team approach that is now standard in the management of cancer.
