Farewell to André Knottnerus and welcome to David Tovey

André was the fourth Co-Editor of this Journal which was established in 1988 by Co-Editors Alvan Feinstein and Walter Spitzer through the simple act of renaming the Journal of Chronic Disease. André has made many substantive contributions to the science of clinical epidemiology -two examples are his 1997 paper ‘Medicine based evidence, a prerequisite for evidence based medicine’ [1] and his views on ‘The evidence arena: a multilevel playing field’ [2] -the latter formed the basis for his valedictory symposium in October 2018 at the University of Maastricht. Trained as a primary care physician he has extensive editorial experience at the British Medical Journal, in various roles and as the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of Cochrane Library.