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Gairdner attended [https://www.kelvinside.org/ Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow]; [https://www.dragonschool.org/ Dragon School, Oxford]; and [https://www.greshams.com/ Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk].<ref name="obit"/> He went to school with W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten and sang madrigals with classmate Peter Pears.<ref name="obit"/>
He read chemistry at the {{UNI|University of Oxford|Oxon}} but switched to medicine, did clinical training at Middlesex Hospital and was awarded his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery Degree in 1936.<ref name="obit"/> He did his residency (house physician) in paediatrics at [https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/| The Hospital for Sick Children], Great Ormond Street in Bloomsbury, London in 1937-8.<ref name="obit"/><ref name="spence"/> Gairdner described his experience there in a memoir written a half-century later. He wrote, "I recall the sheer enjoyment of working there, but also the periods of overwhelming exhaustion."<ref>{{REFjournal
|last=Gairdner
|init=DMT
Gairdner worked as a fellow in paediatrics at [https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/locations/bellevue/ Bellevue Hospital] in 1939.<ref name="obit"/> During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps for five years, retiring with the rank of Major.<ref name="obit"/><ref name="spence"/>
He became first assistant in the paediatric department at Newcastle upon Tyne where he began to work under Professor Sir [[James Calvert Spence ]] in 1945.<ref name="spence"/> In 1948, he became a consultant paediatrician at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and associate lecturer in paediatrics at the {{UNI|University of Cambridge|UCam}}, where he remained until his retirement in 1975.<ref name="spence"/>
Gairdner's landmark 1949 article, ''The Fate of the Foreskin: A Study of Circumcision'',<ref name="fate1949">{{GairdnerDM 1949}}</ref> was described as "a model of perceptive and pungent writing."<ref name="spence" /> It concluded that if [[circumcision]] became uncommon it would result in "the saving of about 16 children's lives lost from circumcision each year in this country..."<ref name="fate1949"/> According to Wallerstein (1985), the article "began to affect the practice of circumcision by the British".<ref>{{REFjournal
|last=Wallerstein
|init=E
|author-link=Edward Wallerstein
|title=Circumcision: the uniquely American medical enigma
|journal=The Urologic clinics of North America
[[Category:Author]]
[[Category:Researcher]]
[[Category:Physician]]
[[Category:Pediatrician]]
[[Category:History]]