Archie Sloan was born in Glasgow in 1917. He attended Glasgow University from 1934 to 1940, obtaining a BSc degree in 1937 and an MBChB (with commendation) in 1940. After a year as a House Physician in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, he joined the RAMC from 1941 to 1946; being mentioned in Despatches in 1943. Thereafter he continued his scholarly career by being awarded an MRCP (London) in 1948, an MD (Glasgow) (with honours) in 1955 (he was also awarded the Bellahouston Medal), an FRCP (Glasgow) in 1964 and a PhD (UCT) in 1966. In 1967 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and served on Council for 12 years and held the office of President in 1977 to 1978.  In 1955 he left Scotland to take up the Chair in Physiology at the University of Cape Town; a post he held for 25 years until he retired in 1980. Always interested in history, he continued studying the subject as an Emeritus Professor and graduated with a BA from UCT in 1983 with History and Italian as principal subjects. One of the legacies of his interest in matters historical is that he collected and bound, in five volumes, the publications of the Department of Physiology (together with documentation on the members of staff) from its inception in 1913 to 1977. Archie published 94 articles in a wide variety of local and international journals and wrote a text book of Physiology for Physiotherapists, as well as a book on English Medicine in the Seventieth Century. Most of his articles were on cardiovascular and exercise physiology (which included a study on the anthropometry of Sherpa men). These scientific articles were interspersed with interesting historical treatises. During his long and active career he was also Visiting Processor at the Universities of North Carolina (1961), Virginia (1964), Glasgow (1969) and Milan (1976). In addition, after retiring, he was Editor of the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa from 1984 to 1987.