Sir John Peter Mills Tizard FRCP (1 April 1916, London – 27 October 1993, Hillingdon) was a British paediatrician and professor at the University of Oxford.

Tizard was principally notable for important research into neonatology and paediatric neurology[1] and being a founder member of the Neonatal Society in 1959.

[1] Tizard came from a prominent intellectual family – his father, his grandfather and his younger brother were all members of the Royal Society.

[4] During and after World War II, in the years 1942–1946, Tizard served in the Royal Army Medical Corps undertaking general duties in North Africa and Sicily.

[4] In 1954, he was appointed Reader in paediatrics to the Institute of Child Health, in charge of the neonatal unit and an honorary Consultant paediatrician to Hammersmith Hospital,[3] In 1964 was appointed Professor of Paediatrics at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University of London, heading the neonatal research unit.

Albert Claneaux, who was Dawkings predecessor at the Institute, had collaborated with Tizard, and gave the first definitive account of the epidemiology of Intraventricular haemorrhage in newborn infants.

[1] Dawkins had been working at the Nuffield Institute with David Hull and had established the reason for the response to cold in the human infant.

On first meeting, Tizard was often considered brutally frank and forthright in conversation, but was generally supportive, and was at this best working with patients,[4] whom he treated with respect and dignity.