Sir James Black Baillie, OBE (24 October 1872 – 9 June 1940) was a British moral philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds.
He is said to be the model for the character Sir John Evans in the novel The Weight of the Evidence (1944) by Michael Innes.
He studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he gained a PhD in 1899 on The growth of Hegel's logic,[2] and Trinity College, Cambridge.
After public service posts, Baillie was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1924 to his retirement in 1938.
Baillie was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1919 New Year Honours,[6] made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy following a meeting with Italian leader Benito Mussolini[1] and received a knighthood in 1931.