Dr Ronald Meikle OAM – a man ahead of his time

By Margaret Maccoll

Dr Ronald Gordon Meikle OAM was destined for great things when he topped his class in medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and headed off to the Royal Melbourne Hospital to take on radiology.

But it was his ability to envisage the direction in which radiology would take medicine and his courage to act that led to his success in his chosen field and his recognition with a Medal of the Order of Australia in this year’s Australia Day Awards.

“It became very obvious to me that advances in imaging was a game changer,” he said.

“Imaging has charged medicine but a lot of doctors didn’t realise it at the start. It’s changed the mechanism of disease. It’s been really…