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Gairdner attended Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow; Dragon School, Oxford; and 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 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
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Gairdner worked as a fellow in paediatrics at Bellevue Hospital in 1939.<ref name="obit"/> During the Second World War, 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"/>
His obituary in the ''British Medical Journal'' described Gairdner as "an outstanding figure in the development of British Paediatrics after the second world war". His statistics from the special care baby unit were "invaluable in monitoring trends in perinatal mortality and morbidity since 1950." He constantly produced important research over a range of topics and he improved the management of respiratory problems in the newborn. He was appointed editor of the ''Archives of Disease in Childhood'' in 1964, a position he held for 15 years, until his retirement in 1979. During that time the journal "steadily increased in size, scientific content, and international reputation."<ref name="obit"/><ref name="spence"/><ref name="editorial">{{REFjournal