Sir Michael David Rawlins (28 March 1941 – 1 January 2023) was a British clinical pharmacologist and emeritus professor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. During his medical career he chaired several executive agencies including the Committee on Safety of Medicines from 1993 to 1998, followed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for 14 years from its formation in 1999 and then the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for six years from 2014. From 2012 to 2014 he was president of the Royal Society of Medicine. Rawlins delivered several eponymous lectures during his medical career including the 2008 Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), where he argued that there were other ways of collecting useful clinical evidence other than only randomised controlled trials and he encouraged a range of methods to provide a more holistic evaluation. For his contributions to protecting people from the side-effects of medicines he was knighted in 1999, and for his services to the safety of medicines, healthcare, and innovation he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 2017. Early life and education Michael Rawlins was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on 28 March 1941. His father was the Reverend Jack Rawlins, vicar of Northwood-on-Trent in Staffordshire, and his mother was Evelyn Daphne Douglas-Hamilton who following the death of his father later married a general practitioner. He attended Uppingham School, Rutland, with David Li and left there in 1959. In 1962 he graduated first class from University of London. He obtained his medical degree from St Thomas' Hospital in 1965. Career Rawlins completed his house jobs in 1967; firstly in surgery at St Thomas' and then in medicine at Portsmouth. His subsequent senior house job was at the Brompton Hospital, London. The following year he gained membership of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) of London. After spending a year lecturing at St Thomas' he took up a senior register post at the Hammersmith followed by a year as visiting research fellow at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 1973, he was appointed the Ruth and Lionel Jacobson professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. There, he delivered his inaugural lecture in 1974, on "Variability in Response to Drugs", and remained at Newcastle until 2006. From 1977 to 1983 he was a member of the National