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Nicolas Glansdorff (25 December 1937–July 2009)

Nicolas Glansdorff

Nicolas Glansdorff, microbiologist, geneticist, teacher and humanist has left us suddenly at age 71.

He obtained his PhD in 1966 in the Laboratoire de Microbiologie de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) whose head was Jean-Marie Wiame. The title of his dissertation was: Le contrôle génétique des biosynthèses de l'arginine et du carbamyl-phosphate chez E. coli. After graduating in Botany, Nicolas very soon perceived that the future of research in the life sciences lay in a combination of biochemical and genetic approaches which was to become the science of molecular biology. One of the main research themes of his career, arginine and pyrimidine metabolism and its regulation in microbes, dates from that period, under the guidance of J.-M. Wiame in Brussels and Werner K. Maas at the New York University Medical School, where he made several visits, first in 1962, then in the 1970s. During these visits, he came to know many of the American colleagues who now recognize themselves as members of the 'Arginine and Pyrimidines' community. In 1966-1967, he did a one-year postdoctoral stay in Guido Pontecorvo's laboratory at Glasgow University, where he familiarized himself with the mold Aspergillus. He often acknowledged that making G. Pontecorvo's acquaintance had lifelong effects in terms of scientific perception and the humanistic significance of working as a scientist. This vision of science and of the role of the scientist he transmitted to his first students in the late 1960s and 1970s, when he had been appointed to the chair of Erfelijkheidsleer en Microbiologie (Flemish for Genetics and Microbiology) at the newly founded Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His own VUB laboratory and the Microbiology laboratory of the ULB were then sharing an out-of-campus facility where they were hosted by a Microbial Research Institute supported by the Province of Brabant, whose research focused on arginine and pyrimidines in yeast, under the leadership of J.-M. Wiame and André Piérard who later took over from Wiame as head of the ULB Microbiology lab. This geographic and spiritual proximity led to the development of a quite large research community in which some of the teams were now headed by former students of Wiame's or Glansdorff's. The research emphasis was not only unraveling arginine and pyrimidine metabolic pathways and their genetic and enzymatic regulation at the molecular level, but also the comparative evolution of these pathways.

From early on, Nicolas was fascinated by extreme environments, a fascination which owed much to books such as Jules Verne's Voyage au Centre de la Terre From the late 1970s on, he started on his other major research theme: life in extreme environments, in particular extremes of temperature and/or pressure. For him and his collaborators, this was not a mere extension of comparative studies on arginine and pyrimidine metabolism, but a search for clues to the origin of life. He took part in an expedition to the Antarctic on the oceanographic vessel Polar Stern and he later dived to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the French IFREMER submarine, the Nautile. His interest in extreme environments included the rest of the universe and the possibility of finding traces of microbial life on other planets. He sat on committees such as the Life Science Advisory Group of the European Space Agency. One of his concerns, shared by other scientists, was the possible contamination by human agency of samples collected from the Moon or from Mars.

He was a member of EMBO since 1983. From 1996 to 2001, he was Director of the Microbiology Department of the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Microbiology. He became an Emeritus Professor of the VUB in 2003 (in Belgium, retirement is compulsory at age 65), but remained active in research on evolution and, at the time of his death, several papers are still in press or in preparation, adding to a considerable sum of papers published in peer-reviewed journals and of chapters in books. In 2007, he was co-editor, with Charles Gerday, of the book Physiology and Biochemistry of Extremophiles for ASM Press.

Nicolas Glansdorff was an excellent and inspired teacher who never hesitated to alter the contents of his lectures to present new, exciting, developments. His lectures and his enthusiasm were appreciated by biochemistry, biology and bioengineering students alike, and after his retirement, he kept lecturing on discoveries and theories pertaining to the origin of life. In this context, he was very active in the defense of the theory of evolution against creationism and intelligent design.

As a man, Nicolas Glansdorff was a humanist, an admirer of Spinoza's philosophy and very much influenced by the critical rationalism of Karl Popper. He was also an outdoors enthusiast and a dedicated hiker with a predilection for Northern Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. It was during a solitary trek in Lapland that he died accidentally in July 2009. He is remembered fondly by colleagues, students and friends alike.

Em Prof Dr Raymond Cunin

Donald Black (1940–11 April 2009)

Donald Black

Donald Black was born in Salford on 28 January 1940. Donald obtained both his BSc and PhD in chemistry from the University of Manchester, the city where he grew up. On completion of his PhD he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University where he worked with Professor Erwin Chargaff from 1964 to 1966 after which he returned to UK to take up a senior scientific position in the biochemistry department of the Institute for Animal Health, Pirbright, Surrey (then known as Animal Virus Research Institute). At Pirbright his research centered on the molecular biology of viruses, such as foot-and-mouth disease, vesicular exanthema of swine, African swine fever and capripox, which are the causative agents of a wide variety of diseases of farm livestock. In the early days at the institute, Donald worked with the late Dr Fred Brown FRS on RNA and protein synthesis in foot-and-mouth disease virus. In 1985 he became leader of the capripox virus group and initiated studies on the molecular analysis of the capripox virus genome. He systematically mapped the genes required for replication of the virus which led to its development as a vaccine vector. On his retirement from the Pirbright Institute in 1996 he was awarded a Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to work at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore India. In 1998 he moved to Oxford to work with Professor Geoffrey Smith at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology where he continued to work on the analysis of poxvirus genomes. He retired from that post in 2001.

Donald was a dedicated Indophile and contributed very significantly to the training of young Indian virologists. His association with the Indian virology community began in 1988 when he went as an FAO consultant in molecular virology to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute. Along with colleagues from the Pirbight laboratory he organized and helped run a course on advanced techniques of genome analysis. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the Indian Virological Society when he was invited to speak at the international conference on molecular virology in the tropics at Lucknow. He played a key role in strengthening the international working group on tropical virology (Virotrop). From then on he made regular visits to various universities, research institutions in India where he gave lectures and workshops under the aegis of Royal Society-INSA exchange programme and with fellowships from the Jawarharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research to work at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he was visiting Professor in 2002 and 2004. He was also instrumental in setting up research programmes in the Veterinary Colleges at Bangalore and Tirupati and in the virology department of Sri Venkateshwara University, Tirupathi.

Donald Black was a very warm hearted, friendly person in the interactions with scientist and non-scientists alike. Outside of his scientific work he showed a keen interest in other cultures and religions which made him a very wide circle of friends from all over the world. He died on 11 April 2009 at his residence in Guildford following a sudden heart attack. He will be greatly missed by his family and many friends.

Tom Barrett

Dr Mike Mayo (d. 31 December 2008)

Mike Mayo Mike was born and brought up in London, and after studying at Nottingham University for a degree in Botany (First Class Honours) he did his PhD under Professor Ted Cocking, studying the infection of tomato fruit protoplasts by Tobacco mosaic virus. The use of protoplasts for studying plant viruses was a novel technique at that time. At Nottingham Mike met Catherine and they married in 1966. They moved to Scotland in 1968 when Mike was appointed as a Biochemist/Virologist in the Virology Department at the Scottish Horticultural Research Institute (later to become the Scottish Crop Research Institute) at Invergowrie near Dundee. Mike started to apply some of the recently developed techniques in molecular biology to study plant viruses. He soon became the leading light at SHRI in the use of gel electrophoresis and the other molecular methods for studying plant viruses that today we take for granted. During the 35 years that Mike worked at the institute he collaborated with many colleagues on a number of exceptionally fruitful research studies including - the structure and function of Nepovirus genomes; plant virus infection processes in protoplasts; Luteoviruses, particularly Potato leafroll virus, including publishing the first full genome sequence of PLRV; and genetic manipulation with plant virus sequences.

Following a sabbatical year in Strasbourg in 1974, Mike started to develop many international contacts and collaborations, particularly with researchers in Europe, India, Japan, North and South America and Australia, and he eventually visited most of the 'virological' corners of the globe. One particularly productive aspect of this was the stream of overseas students and young researchers through his lab, indeed there were times when it resembled the United Nations. Mike was proud of his collaborations with virologists in developing countries, and he was instrumental in ensuring that SCRI remained the respected and much frequented international centre of Plant Virology established by Professor Bryan Harrison. Many of these international colleagues, students and visiting workers have continued to keep in close contact with Mike and Catherine, such was the warm affection in which they were held.

Mike had an ebullient and dynamic personality and was always full of ideas and enthusiasm for science throughout his career. He was a distinguished researcher of international reputation who also put great effort into refereeing papers for numerous journals and work on committees. Mike's role on the 'International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)' was a particularly important one and brought him into contact with a wide range of international virologists. He was a major figure in the work of the ICTV and the production of their highly prestigious 7th and 8th Reports. He was also an Editor of Journal of General Virology from 1984 to 1990.

Within his circle of friends and colleagues, particularly the younger scientists who worked with him, Mike was always held in great affection and regard. Always a kindly and thoughtful 'boss', he frequently put himself out for his younger staff providing advice and help with personal problems. Mike also maintained many interests outside work; he was particularly fond of good food and wine, travel, music, golf, gardening and DIY. Guests to his house were frequently impressed by his talents as a cook and latterly as a gardener of some distinction in the difficult terrain on the Isle of Mull. In 2003 Mike and Catherine retired to live on Mull, a place they loved and where they spent some very happy times. Mike had a close and loyal family - wife Catherine who is a highly regarded biology teacher and his two sons Andrew and James working in IT and Chemistry. Mike was a great character in so many ways and will be sorely missed by all those who knew him.

Hugh Barker

Professor Sir James Baddiley FRS (15 May 1918-18 November 2008)

James Baddiley Jim Baddiley died at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge in November after a short illness. His friends and colleagues were particularly fortunate to be with him at the inauguration of Newcastle University’s Baddiley Lecture in June. He was in great form and none of us imagined it would be our last opportunity to meet. He is remembered with great affection by all who worked with him, for his incisive mind, his warmth and dry sense of humour. Despite scientific honours too many to list, and a knighthood awarded in 1977, Jim was a modest man who kept his primary commitment to good science throughout his life.

Jim studied chemistry at Manchester, where a year later Alexander Todd took over the chair of Organic Chemistry and established research into the chemistry of nucleotides and nucleic acids. Jim joined Todd’s group as a PhD student, moving with him to Cambridge in 1944. There he made a series of important contributions to nucleotide chemistry which culminated in the first structurally definitive chemical synthesis of ATP.

He consolidated his reputation through research fellowships in Stockholm and at the Lister Institute in London. At Fritz Lipmann’s invitation, the Baddiley group at the Lister took up the problem of the structure of coenzyme A, resulting in their final determination of its complete structure. He subsequently collaborated with David Hughes on the biosynthesis of coenzyme A in Lactobacillus arabinosus and became convinced of the value of working with bacteria as model cells. During the work with Lactobacillus, one of Jim’s group, Tony Mathias, partly characterized two novel cytidine nucleotides.

In 1954, at the age of 35, Jim took up the Chair of Organic Chemistry at Newcastle University. There he pursued the hypothesis that cytidine nucleotides were the precursors of unknown bacterial phosphate-containing polymers. In the light of biochemical knowledge in 1954, this was a brilliantly novel idea. Nothing was known of the role of nucleotides in nucleic acid synthesis, and Leloir’s discovery of UDP-glucose was newly published. The hypothesis led Baddiley’s group to the discovery of ‘membrane’ and cell-wall-linked teichoic acids. Investigations of their structure, function and biosynthesis, and wider aspects of bacterial cell walls, engaged him for the whole period of his work at Newcastle, latterly in his Microbiological Chemistry Research Laboratory (MCRL). The work carried out there made a major contribution to our understanding of the Gram-positive bacterial cell wall. Jim had a keen interest in the idea that a transmembrane biochemical ‘machine’ was responsible for cell-wall assembly.

Achievements included the development of techniques for characterizing sugar and alditol phosphate-containing compounds, identification of the role of teichoic acids in ionic balance in the cell envelope, the biochemistry of the linkage between teichoic acid and peptidoglycan, and the use of continuous culture to study the regulation of cell-wall assembly.

The MCRL was a hugely stimulating place to work. Researchers enjoyed a freedom inconceivable nowadays. Jim did not believe in disciplinary boundaries and would enthusiastically encourage the pursuit of good ideas whether of a chemical, biochemical or microbiological flavour.

He had connections in a wide range of scientific disciplines through his work for Research Councils and scientific groups. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1961 and was a member of its council from 1977 to 1979. At various times he was a member of the Councils of the Chemical Society and the SGM, and a member of the Committee of the Biochemical Society. He sat on SERC’s Enzyme Chemistry and Technology Committee and the Biological Science Committee.

In 1981 Jim and his wife Hazel (whom he had married in 1944) moved back to Cambridge where Jim took up an SERC Senior Research Fellowship in the Biochemistry Department and became a Fellow of Pembroke College. There, with a PhD student, he continued to research aspects of teichoic acid and cell-wall synthesis, and as recently as 2003 published with Frank Neuhaus, with whom he had first collaborated 43 years before, a stimulating and insightful review of teichoic acid function. He took up various duties for the College and the University and was particularly involved in the establishment of the Institute of Biotechnology. Jim and Hazel continued to give a friendly and sociable welcome to past colleagues in their delightful cottage in Hildersham until Hazel's death in 2007.

Ian Hancock, Glen Lodge, Northumberland

Professor Naomi Datta FRS (17 September 1922-30 November 2008)

Naomi Datta Naomi née Goddard was born in London, the youngest daughter of a chartered surveyor. She attended St Mary’s School, Wantage, Oxfordshire. She studied at the Sorbonne, returning to England to enrol at University College London (UCL), followed by Medical Studies at the West London Hospital Medical School. Naomi was the first in Europe to demonstrate that resistance to antibiotics could be transmitted from one species of bacteria to another. She decided that she wanted to study medicine, partly due to the influence of her older sister Helen who married a pathologist.

Naomi started her studies at the Sorbonne, but her father asked her to return home when war broke out. After a short spell of hospital work, in 1940 she started the Medical Foundation course at UCL. For the first year the female students were evacuated to Bangor. In the second year both sexes studied together and were based at Leatherhead. It was there she met Prakash Datta, whom she married in 1943.

Prakash went on to study medicine at UCL. Naomi went to the West London School of Medicine as at that time UCL admitted very few women to their medical course. She completed her medical degree in 1946 and worked for a year as a junior doctor. She joined the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) in Colindale in 1947 as a Senior Bacteriologist and studied part-time for a Diploma in Bacteriology which she was awarded in 1950.

In 1957 Naomi was appointed as an assistant lecturer in bacteriology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS), Hammersmith Hospital. In 1978 she was appointed as Professor of Microbial Genetics at the University of London, retiring as Emeritus Professor in 1984. London University was the parent body of the RPMS. This responsibility transferred to Imperial College in 2007.

Lecturers were expected to undertake some independent research, as well as teaching. In 1959 there was an outbreak of infection in the Hammersmith Hospital caused by Salmonella Typhimurium, affecting staff and patients. Naomi collected 309 cultures from affected people. She tested the cultures to see if any of the characteristics had changed over the course of the outbreak. She found that 25 cultures were drug-resistant, 15 of which were resistant to sulfonamides, streptomycin, and tetracycline - an unexpected result.

In 1961 a Japanese research team published their results on the transfer of drug resistance between enterobacteria. Naomi tested her strains in a mixed culture to see if there was any transfer of resistance to Shigella sonnei and discovered this occurred in a significant number of cases. The resistance could also transfer back from Shi. sonnei to Sal. Typhimurium. Naomi published her results in 1962 in the Journal of Hygiene.

The next query was how this resistance was transferred. She and other researchers thought that plasmids were responsible. Researching the biology of plasmids, their structure, genetics and function became the focus of her work. She built up a team of researchers and worked with many microbiologists from abroad. She devised a classification of plasmids, led conferences and contributed chapters to major texts.

Though fully employed, her family were the focus of her life. Some help was employed to help care for the children when they were at school, but once home from her scientific work she readily took up the role of mother. She was an excellent cook and enjoyed entertaining. Family holidays were important, as they had been in her own childhood. She enjoyed travelling to conferences worldwide. When she retired she and Prakash travelled widely for enjoyment. She contributed two chapters to But the Crackling is Superb: an Anthology of Food and Drink by Fellows of the Royal Society and Foreign Members, published in 1988.

When she retired, Naomi studied linguistics at UCL, but was unable to take postgraduate exams as she did not have an undergraduate arts degree. She took a 2-year part-time postgraduate course in human evolution at the Department of Anthropology. She wrote a dissertation on Y chromosome variations in Greeks, Turks, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and was awarded a Master’s degree. At 75 she was the oldest in the group and thoroughly enjoyed being in a learning situation.

In 1985 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She joined the SGM in 1952 and was made an Honorary member in 1989. Naomi is survived by her husband and their two daughters. Their son died in 2006.

Catharine Haines, Lancaster

Professor Chris Thurston (29 June 1944-18 July 2008)

Chris Thurston died after a long illness at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London. He had suffered profound brain damage following a major heart attack 8 years ago and remained in care for almost all this time. Chris was a polymath, an adventurous and successful researcher and an accomplished teacher, administrator and communicator. During his academic career, conducted almost entirely in the University of London Colleges, he played a major role in the development of microbiology and higher education in London. Chris always made a big impression: he was unusually articulate, humorous and generous.

Chris was a London microbiologist through and through, but not a Londoner by birth. Born in Norfolk, he went to King Edward VI School in Norwich, where he was Head of House, and active in school rowing, drama and the choir. Chris was also a Norwich Cathedral chorister. After his arrival in University College London (UCL) as an undergraduate, Chris never left the capital to work, apart from a sabbatical period (1979-80) with Bob Schmidt at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, USA.

Chris had entered UCL to read microbiology, but in the Department of Botany. Microbiology departments were very thin on the ground, so Chris obtained his degree under a hybrid scheme jointly administered by UCL and Queen Elizabeth College London (QEC), where microbiology was well established. Chris stayed at UCL to do a PhD on the alga - under the supervision of Philip Syrett. When Syrett was appointed to a chair at Swansea, Ian Morris acted as supervisor.

It may seem extraordinary to 21st century young scientists that, while still working for a PhD, Chris was appointed in 1969 to the first lectureship in Biochemistry at QEC in leafy (and trendy) Kensington. In 1970, having obtained his PhD, he transferred to the Microbiology Department, an influential, vigorous and congenial consortium. The Department was established in 1961 from a Bacteriology Department that had existed since 1914. At the time of Chris's move there, the Department comprised John Pirt (the only Professor and Head of Department), together with 'Simos' Anagnostopoulos, Brian Bainbridge, Michael Bazin, Don Kelly, Ted Mathison and Tony Trinci. (Shortly after, in 1975, this author joined to replace Don Kelly). Of these lecturers, six became university professors - remarkable then, less remarkable now. Equally remarkable was the peripatetic electric typewriter that was used by all staff except John Pirt, who had both typewriter and a secretary to use it. It was certainly not remarkable to be appointed to a permanent academic position without a PhD; indeed, Chris took the place of Mr John Birch in John Pirt's group, and Brian Bainbridge, Don Kelly and Tony Trinci were all appointed before award of their PhDs. Nevertheless, PhD or not, Chris made quite an impression as an extremely bright yet sociable new colleague at QEC.

One of the defining characteristics of Chris's research career was his enthusiasm for tackling technically and intellectually difficult projects. Those topics would be challenging now, but truly daunting in the 1970s and 1980s. Chris stuck with the intransigent C. fusca for over 15 years. However, for most of the 1980s, he became fascinated by another, apparently unrelated, line of research on the design and fabrication of redox-mediated electrochemical sensors using whole micro-organisms. In collaboration with Peter Bennetto (Chemistry Department), Jeremy Mason, John Stirling (Biochemistry), Sibel Roller and Gerard Delaney, over a dozen papers, chapters and patents were generated. The two most cited (Roller et al., 1984, J Chem Tech Biotechnol 134B, 3-12; Delaney et al., ibid. 13-27; 79 and 90 citations, respectively) quantify the reduction by diverse bacteria of dyes and show how an appropriate combination of microbe, mediator dye and oxidizable substrate can generate significant, anodic electrode potentials. Subsequent papers described electrochemical bioreactors for treatment of carbohydrate wastes and effluents and application of the principle to biosensors and a sucrose fuel cell to achieve efficient biomass conversions.

Throughout, the science was the motivating force for Chris, but he wanted to share the excitement too and so took great pains to explain his work to others - at home, over the snooker table and to his many colleagues and friends. Equally, he was an excellent listener and always curious to learn what others were doing and how they were doing it.

In 1992, he published his first paper on the molecular genetics of the commercial mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, launching the most productive and highly cited era of his tragically short career. In collaboration with excellent postdoctoral researchers and his long-standing friend David Wood (HRI) and funded by competitive research council grants, Chris tackled the cloning and characterization of genes encoding proteins involved in the degradation of cellulose, a process critical to the commercial production of the mushroom. Laccase (polyphenol oxidase) received the most attention since it is an abundant glycoprotein that constitutes 2% of mycelial protein during vegetative growth. Chris also published significant papers on A. bisporus proteinases, xylanase and peroxidases and, in particular, the cellulases that enable growth on crystalline cellulose as carbon source; four cellulose-growth specific (cel) genes were isolated and characterized and their regulation elucidated. These papers (e.g. Yagüe et al., 1997, Microbiology 143, 239-244; Smith et al., 1998, Microbiology 144, 1063-1069) illustrate beautifully Chris's concise and precise writing and a clarity of thought and expression. This topic occupied Chris until his illness, generating en route his most highly cited paper, a valuable review in Microbiology (Thurston, 1994, 140, 19-26; 578 citations to date). It is quite typical of Chris's modesty that this review acknowledges David Wood as follows: '...from whom I have learned greatly about laccases and other fungal enzymes; he is not however responsible for any errors or omissions - they simply reflect my imperfect learning'.

Chris served the SGM with dedication and distinction. He was for many years (1987-92) an Editor of the Journal of General Microbiology (the predecessor of Microbiology) and served as Professional Affairs Officer (1993-98).

His inclination to incisive thought and reasoning and his love of precise measurements and instrumentation were reflected in Chris's many other interests. He greatly admired optically and mechanically fine cameras and we enjoyed many long debates on the relative merits of rangefinder, large format and SLR cameras. I suspect that Chris would not have objected to the assertion that he treasured the photographic apparatus as much as the images. He appreciated fine Eastern carpets, wines, whiskies (and was a founding member of the exclusive QEC Malt Whisky Society), cigars (for a while) and food (offering, for example, a postdoctoral colleague a dinner party recipe for watercress, date and orange salad). In these worldly pleasures, as in his published research output, Chris valued quality over quantity. At lunchtimes, in QEC days, he would walk through the lanes of Holland Park adjacent to the College, discussing work, life and experiments with a few close colleagues. Chris had a rare regard for an appropriate work/life balance.

Chris was humorous, a mine of information and an observer of small detail. He loved The Times crosswords. Chris also had style. In a decade where many of his colleagues paraded dubious sartorial taste (and I dare not mention by name which colleagues), Chris favoured highly polished, brown brogue shoes and tailored, crisp shirts, and his trademark, reddish hair was always well cut and brushed. With his wife Sue, and later their daughter Anna, they lived in beautifully restored period houses. His office at QEC was very organized; neat examples of his curious, rather spidery handwriting were carefully filed.

In the College community, Chris will probably be best remembered for his outstanding contributions to College management through services to at least 20 Committees and Boards during his 31 years at QEC/King's. In 1975-76, he represented the Academic Board of QEC on the College Council, and was later a major driving force in the University of London Board of Studies. He was instrumental in some of the most tumultuous mergers and reorganizations the University has seen. He was a member of the joint Working Party for the merger of QEC, Chelsea College and King's College (1983-85) and played a similar role from 1994 on the Academic Planning Team for the King's/UMDS merger. He was Deputy Head of the Division of Biosphere Sciences from 1988 to 1991 and retained a high profile in Divisional management in its successor, Life Sciences. He worked tirelessly with Marian Simmonds on 'The Cornwall House Project' to plan and bring to fruition the move of the Kensington scientists to Waterloo, generating through a PFI the current home of Biomedical and Health Sciences - the Franklin-Wilkins Building. His work for the project planning team involved innumerable plans, measurements, and company representatives, not to mention a great deal of hassle. These were trying times, yet Chris remained incredibly resilient, exuberant and professional in all his dealings. He made trips overseas to inspect laboratories already designed and furnished by tendering companies: a trip to California was memorable for his hotel room, which was accessed by a high walkway - unsuited to his vertigo. Today's Franklin-Wilkins Building on the South Bank is largely based on the scheme that he helped to generate for disposition of the office, social, teaching, library and research space.

Chris was a thorough, systematic teacher and examiner yet with no sense of self-importance. His intellect never got in the way. Keith Gull remembers Chris accepting with good grace a prank involving the removal of his office door (yes, the removal of the office door) and hiding it in a basement room for a week!

Chris was, in Sue Thurston's words, curious, kind and contented. He was a fine gentleman and an accomplished scientist. The plethora of his accomplishments endeared him to so many. Their loss and sorrow must be compounded by the nature of his long illness.

I am very much indebted to Sue Thurston, Keith Gull, Janet Hurst, Joy Poole, Sibel Roller, John Stirling, Tony Trinci and Ann Wood for the recollections, constructive comments and invaluable information received during the writing of this obituary.

Robert Poole, The University of Sheffield

Professor Norbert Pfennig (8 July 1925-11 February 2008)

Norbert Pfennig, former professor of limnology and microbial ecology at the University of Konstanz, Germany, has died, aged 82. Born in 1925, he studied biology in Göttingen and soon concentrated on microbiology under the guidance of August Rippel-Baldes. In 1952, he obtained his doctoral degree in organic chemistry under Hans Brockmann. He became an adjunct professor of microbiology in Göttingen in 1964 and later the head of a research group for nutritional physiology of micro-organisms.

When Hans Schlegel joined the Göttingen Institute for Microbiology in 1959 and brought along water samples from a pond with obvious development of purple phototrophic sulfur bacteria, Norbert decided to try to cultivate them. Within 2 years, he had explored the growth demands and invented a specific technique employing defined media to further enrich and finally isolate these barely cultivable, fastidious bacteria.

A research visit with Cornelis van Niel at Pacific Grove, California, deepened his interest in phototrophs, and he remained an admirer of van Niel as a researcher and teacher. After the discovery of the importance of vitamin B12 for the cultivation of phototrophs, a broad range of these bacteria was isolated in pure culture and characterized in depth. From his days in van Niel's lab, co-operations arose with Germaine Cohen-Bazire and Roger Stanier, leading to detailed electron microscopic studies of the intracellular membrane arrangement and the discovery of the Chlorobium vesicles. The following years were filled with numerous studies of phototrophs and their taxonomic organization, to which his first postdoc, Hans Trüper, contributed, and he served Bergey's Manual as a Trustee for many years.

New research fields opened up during a study of green phototrophs. From an enrichment culture of Chlorobium-like phototrophs on ethanol, the first pure cultures of ethanol- and acetate-oxidizing sulfur reducers were obtained (with Hanno Biebl), along with the discovery of a syntrophic co-operation through a sulfur/sulfide cycle. These and numerous sulfate reducers (with Friedrich Widdel) were also the basis for a long-lasting friendship with Rudolf Thauer who studied the biochemistry of these novel bacteria.

In 1979, Norbert accepted a professorship at the University of Konstanz until his retirement in 1990. As a scientist always searching for holistic explanations, he saw the micro-organism not only as a cell or strain with metabolic capabilities, but also as part of the ecosystem with its specific challenges, including limiting substrate supply, light of varying intensity and quality, and metabolic exchange with partner organisms. Inspired by this philosophy and his new position, he entered a new phase in his career, extending his research on the interaction of microbes with their natural environment. Lake Konstanz and small lakes and ditches in the area became the objects of research and teaching, with a focus on the activities of anaerobic bacteria, especially the phototrophs, the sulfate reducers and syntrophic methanogenic co-cultures.

Unlike many traditional professors, he gave an enormous amount of freedom to his scientists and acted more like a colleague, always curious to exchange news. His lectures and courses were characterized by a similar attitude; he did not regard himself as someone who simply had to transfer knowledge, but to convey the attitude of asking questions, always willing to learn from the microbes. He enjoyed discoveries like any graduate student, even the small breakthroughs, and used to express this by his unconstrained laughter.

He was awarded the Research Prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie in 1980, he was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, and an honorary member of the SGM and the Vereinigung für Allgemeine und Angewandte Mikrobiologie in Germany. He was awarded the Bergey Medal in 1992 and received an Honory Doctoral Degree from the University of Bonn.

The microbiological community in Germany and abroad has lost one of its most prominent members and founding fathers, one of the last representatives of a general microbiology based on a specific feeling for the microbes' capabilities and demands from the ecological perspective. Several of his discoveries changed and extended our understanding of the action of microbes in nature. Those closer to him lost a personal friend of unusual modesty, an honourable personality with an open mind. Our sympathy is with his wife Helga, five children and nine grandchildren.

Friedrich Widdel, Bremen; Bernhard Schink, Konstanz

Professor Sir Howard Dalton FRS (8 February 1944-12 January 2008)

Howard Dalton Howard was born in New Malden, Surrey, the son of a lorry driver. He was highly intelligent with an inquiring mind and his early interest in science was evident from his many exploits with cocktails of chemicals, which often had explosive consequences. Having survived many escapades with these early ‘laboratory’ experiments, Howard was eager to learn more and his mother was extremely proud of him passing the 11+ examination and attending Raynes Park Grammar School. Howard was awarded a place at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, graduating in 1965 with a BSc in Microbiology. His research career started when he undertook a DPhil with Professor John Postgate FRS at the ARC Unit of Nitrogen Fixation, University of Sussex, where he worked on nitrogen fixation in the soil bacterium Azotobacter and helped to elucidate how this aerobic soil bacterium protects its nitrogenase from oxygen damage by augmentation of respiration and conformational protection mechanisms. Howard then worked for 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Len Mortensen at Purdue University, Indiana, on the biochemistry of nitrogenase in the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium.

Ever resourceful, while in the USA he avoided the possibility of being drafted to Vietnam by his ordination into the Universal Life Church, ironically on 1 April 1969!

Recognizing that electron spin resonance spectroscopic techniques were going to be of great importance in the study of metaloproteins, Howard returned to the University of Sussex in 1970 to work with Dr Bob Bray in the Department of Chemistry on two molybdenum-containing enzymes, nitrate reductase from Aspergillus nidulans and xanthine dehydrogenase from Veillonella alcalescens. The following year, Howard married Kira Rozdestvensky, whom he had met while living in the USA, and when Professor Roger Whittenbury persuaded Howard to take up a lectureship in Microbiology at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick in 1973, they settled in the village of Radford Semele near Leamington Spa. Roger recalls that Warwick in those days was hardly a magnet for microbiologists, offering only an abandoned chemistry laboratory containing just two pieces of equipment, a broken piano and a dartboard! A brief chat about his background and a promise that he would work on Roger’s beloved methane-oxidizing bacteria and that was sufficient to initiate Howard’s long and illustrious tenure at Warwick.

Howard built up a large research group at Warwick and pioneered work on two enzymes involved in bacterial oxida tion of methane, a soluble, cytoplasmic methane mono-oxygenase (MMO) and a completely distinct membrane-bound particulate MMO. These remarkable enzymes can convert methane, a rather inert compound, into methanol. Howard and colleagues were able to purify and characterize them at the biochemical and molecular level, work which led to much of our current understanding of the structure and catalytic mechanisms of these MMOs. Howard also quickly realized that the soluble MMO had remarkable co-oxidation properties, which stimulated a longstanding interest in biocatalysis and biotransformations using MMO and other oxygenases. Through this research he also made extremely important contributions to research into the use of microbes to produce chemicals, work which was to stimulate his later interests in biofuels. He was consultant for the New Jersey company Celanese and then joined the Scientific Advisory Board for the spin-out biotechnology company Celgene, which gave him considerable insight into chemical and industrial aspects of microbiology that he used to good effect in his biotransformation research. All of this research at Warwick brought him a much-deserved international reputation, yielded many seminal publications in a career generating well over 250 scientific papers and opened up whole new research fields in the microbiology of one carbon (C1) compounds. Howard was awarded a Personal Chair at Warwick in 1983 and as his scientific career flourished, he and his colleagues were immensely proud of the accolades he received, especially his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993, his appointment as President of the Society for General Microbiology (1997-2000), the award of the Leeuwenhoek Medal Lecture at the Royal Society in 2000 and his knighthood in the New Year Honours list in 2007 for his services to science.

Howard also made significant contributions to the life of the University of Warwick. He was Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences (1999-2002) and held many positions in the University dealing with academic matters and other areas of University life. His enthusiasm for and extensive knowledge of Japanese gardens were also brought into play on campus, resulting in the creation of two fine gardens at Warwick.

In 2002, Howard was seconded to become Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, a role in which he sought to instil scientific rigour into policy-making decisions based on sound scientific evidence. Howard led the scientific advisory team generating the UK contingency plan for dealing with avian influenza virus and was instrumental in raising the profile of climate change as a significant threat, delivering lectures on this and other topics such as biofuels and GM crops at many national and international meetings. He was a great communicator and he wrote a highly entertaining and popular blog describing his 2 week visit to the British Antarctic Survey in 2006 where he observed at first hand the effects of global warming on ice fields in Antarctica. Throughout his time at Defra, Howard maintained strong links with the University, returning each Friday to look after his research group. He returned full time to Warwick in October 2007 and in the short time before his death had already delivered some insightful and entertaining lectures on science policy to final year undergraduates with his usual passion and engaging style.

Howard had an immense zest for science and life in general and was a fine sportsman in every sense of the word. In his early days at Warwick he was a regular in the Rowington Village cricket side; a fiery fast bowler and very useful left-handed batsman. He was a lifelong Spurs supporter and a highly competitive member of the Biological Sciences football team, aptly named 'Biohazard'. In the 1970s Howard performed with distinction in the ‘Biohazard’ team that played a friendly match with the Saudi Arabia national team, thereby adding to his illustrious international career. A great passion of Howard’s was real tennis and he was a member of Leamington Real Tennis Club where his competitive spirit, guile and ability won him many tournaments. It was here, while playing in a friendly doubles tournament, that he tragically collapsed and died on 12 January 2008. He had just returned from a month in The Gambia assisting his wife Kira in her extensive humanitarian work, setting up new schools and medical centres there. This work will now be assisted through generous contributions made to the African Oyster Trust in his memory. He was also excited by the prospect of advising the Gambian government on a number of important environmental issues.

Howard was a down-to-earth, self-effacing man, outgoing and witty and in the 1980s was a 'leading light' at gatherings of the staff of Biological Sciences at Warwick in weekly socials at local pubs (code-named 'Choir-Practice'!). He also enjoyed the occasional 'poker-night' with selected colleagues who invariably relieved him of his hard-earned cash. Howard’s penetrating questions and insightful comments at national and international scientific meetings always made for lively and stimulating debate and discussing science with him was always immensely rewarding. He was extremely generous of his time with well over 100 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, and it was a real privilege for me to work with him as a PhD student and then as a colleague for nearly 30 years. Above all else, he made science fun and was an inspirational mentor, a much-loved colleague and a dear friend. He will be very sorely missed. Howard is survived by his wife Kira and children (Christopher, Eric, Jeremy and Amber).

Colin Murrell, University of Warwick

John Grainger writes...

I first worked with Howard when he joined the committee of the then SGM Teaching Group. We were full of trepidation when we learnt that he was to become the next Council rep on the group, expecting by reputation for him to appear only occasionally at committee meetings and then bronzed and with his leg in plaster from a skiing incident, or some similar scrape. But we were totally wrong - he was absolutely excellent and put in 100% attendance. I have an abiding memory after one of our meetings at an SGM conference of him pushing his way to the bar and coming back with two handfuls of empty glasses. The Fermentation Group had had a symposium sponsored by a drinks firm and their officers couldn’t carry all the unused bottles back to Scotland by train. Hearing of their predicament, Howard had taken the excess off their hands for the sole benefit of the Teaching Group Committee! He was always very supportive of my work with schools and particularly influential when he was President.

Some SGM connections - Janet Hurst

Howard was always a great supporter of the SGM, joining in 1964 whilst still an undergraduate student. He was an elected member of Council (1985-1989), the period alluded to by John Grainger, before becoming President 10 years later. SGM staff have fond memories of Howard - he was great to work with and chaired Council meetings humorously but well. He was a bon viveur who always seemed to know a good restaurant in the locality of a scientific meeting, providing us with a welcome change from university fare (but at a cost much to the treasurer’s disapproval). Particularly memorable was a ceilidh at Heriot-Watt, where Howard’s anarchic refusal to follow the caller brought complete chaos to the dance. Howard was involved with the Society right up to the end. He was a keynote speaker in the plenary at the Edinburgh meeting in September 2007 and instrumental, in his Defra role, in commissioning SGM to carry out the independent inquiry into bTB research currently being completed. He will be sadly missed.

Professor Douglas Watson (20 November 1931-4 September 2007)

Members will be sad to hear that Douglas Watson has died. Douglas was a respected internationally renowned virologist, a dedicated teacher and a very thorough and capable administrator. He was enthusiastic, wise, empathic and had a piercing dry wit. During his career Douglas gave unstintingly of his time and expertise to the SGM in a number of roles.

Born in Sheffield, Douglas was educated at the city's King Edward VII School and later at the High School of Stirling. He graduated from the University of Glasgow with a First in Chemistry and was awarded the Mackay Prize as most distinguished graduate in his discipline. His postgraduate work, also in Glasgow, centred on electron microscopic studies on crystal growth. As an Assistant Lecturer he went on to collaborate with John Norris to investigate crystals in Bacillis thuringiensis. In 1960 Douglas accepted the offer to join Michael Stoker and Peter Wildy as the electron microscopist in the newly formed Institute of Virology in Glasgow. Prior to moving into the Institute, Douglas worked with Tony Waterson and Bob Horne in Cambridge. On returning to Glasgow in 1961 he began a long and happy collaboration with Peter Wildy, this resulting in a very significant contribution to electron microscopic quantitative and structural studies of herpesvirus. On Peter Wildy's appointment to the Chair of Virology and Bacteriology in the University of Birmingham, Douglas followed him in 1964 and was soon promoted to the role of Senior Lecturer. It was here that he began his lifelong studies on the proteins and antigens of the herpesviruses. In 1968 he took up a Visiting Fellowship in Canberra at the John Curtis School of Medical Research’s Department. His work on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with Nigel Dimmock proved to be one of the most cited articles on the subject. In 1969 he returned to Birmingham as Reader in Virology.

In 1972 Douglas was appointed to the newly formed Chair of General Microbiology at the University of Leeds and served as Head of Microbiology for two decades. He was joined by fellow virologists Ian Halliburton and Dick Killington, and later Bob Honess, Ken Powell and Dorothy Purifoy. Douglas led a major transformation in the Department which became the largest of its kind in the UK. In 1984 under his research leadership the Virology unit at Leeds received the significant accolade from the Medical Research Council as the MRC Herpesvirus Research Group.

Douglas used his management skills to the advantage of the University of Leeds and served on the major policy-making committees. He commanded enormous esteem and respect for his finely honed intellect and capacity for incisive analysis and commitment to the well being of the institution, its staff and students. He served as Dean of Staff (1989–1991) and as Pro-Vice Chancellor from 1991 until his retirement in 1993.

On a personal note, Douglas was my mentor at Leeds for several years. During that time he helped shape my career and made me realize just how important it is to be an all round academic. I am grateful for his direct, fair and caring advice. My fondest memories will always be of Douglas with a wee dram in one hand and a cigarette in the other late at night at a scientific meeting discussing science in the way that only Douglas could.

Douglas was a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of General Virology from its inception in 1966, was appointed Editor in 1969 and Editor-in-Chief from 1971 to 1975. Thereafter, he was Convenor of the Virus Group. In 1980 he was 'honoured and privileged' to become Treasurer for the SGM, a position he held for 7 years. He transformed the financial status of the Society to the point whereby in 1987 it had assets of £2.6m, with no increase in membership fees. In addition his innovative approach led to the creation of, amongst others, the SGM Research Fund, the Third World Microbiology Fund and the Postgraduate Meetings Fund. The SGM also brought romance for Douglas and in 1993 he married Hilary Bower, the Executive Secretary of the Society.

Our condolences go to Hilary, and to Douglas' children from his first marriage, Shirley and Donald and their families.

Dick Killington, Leeds

Professor Simon Baumberg (5 March 1940-11 April 2007)

Simon Baumberg was one of the most respected members of the UK microbiology community. Simon went to Merton College, Oxford on a scholarship in 1958 and graduated in chemistry in 1961. Initially he was intent on a career in chemistry but as an undergraduate, he acquired a life-long interest in microbial genetics. Following his graduation, Simon joined the Oxford Physical Chemistry Laboratory to study for a doctorate under the supervision of Nobel laureate, C.S. Hinshelwood.

Even at the outset of his research career, Simon demonstrated a remarkable ability for independent critical thinking. Rejecting the thesis of his supervisor that bacteria adapted to changes in their environment via a process involving purely chemical kinetics, Simon quickly identified the innovative work of Jacob and Monod at the Institut Pasteur and Bill Hayes at the Hammersmith Hospital who showed that gene regulation rather than 'chemical kinetics' was the basis for the extraordinary ability of bacteria to respond to changes in their environment. The results from his thesis, published by Simon as the sole author, have stood the test of time. After the award of his doctorate, Simon then spent two highly enjoyable and productive years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of one of the pioneers of the study of gene regulation, Dr Henry J. Vogel, Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Simon returned to the UK in 1966 to take up the appointment of Lecturer in the newly formed Department of Genetics at Leeds University. He was Head of Department on several occasions and remained at Leeds until his retirement in 2005. His research on bacterial gene expression focused on arginine metabolism in Bacillus species and antibiotic synthesis in Streptomyces species. He discovered the AhrC protein of B. subtilis, a repressor/activator of arginine metabolism, and with Peter Stockley analysed its activation and interaction with DNA. Together with Kenny McDowell, he analysed the complex physiological controls involved in the regulation of the biosynthesis antibiotics such as actinorhodin from S. coelicolor.

Simon was a true academic with a keen sense of what was important and a strong dislike for what he often saw as self-serving administration. As a teacher he was universally admired for his gentle but persuasive approach to learning and many of his former students were privileged to become his friends. When Simon was eventually made a Professor by Leeds University, many felt this was a long overdue recognition of his services, not only to that university, but also to the UK genetics and microbiology communities.

Throughout his career Simon was valued as much for his sound judgement, integrity and sense of fair play as for his outstanding scholarship. He was committed to the old-fashioned concept of the 'common good' - through his involvement with scientific research, the students he taught, the Jewish community, and his kindness to everyone that he met in all walks of life. Simon served as General Secretary and Vice-President of the Genetics Society, Senior Editor of the Journal of General Microbiology (now Microbiology), Convener of the Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Group and elected Council Member for the SGM. He was elected as an Honorary Member of the SGM in recognition of his contribution to the Society over more than 20 years.

Simon served on a number of committees of the Medical Research Council, including chairing the Advisory Board, the Non-Clinical Training Fellowships and Career Development Panel and the Stem Cell Bank Users Liaison Committee. He was also a member of the Biological Sciences panel for the 1996 and 2001 Research Assessment Exercises and was subsequently called upon to provide honest and perceptive advice to many university departments preparing for the 2008 exercise. He listened carefully to opinions and was kind and attentive to the most junior member of any team, committee or organization for which he worked. He was also a gentle though perceptive critic, whether examining students or having to explain to an influential scientist why he or she would not be getting the research funds to which they felt they were entitled. In recognition of his service to science, he has awarded an OBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours list - an award he always found amusing, given his instinctive lack of self-importance.

Simon was an active and committed member of the Leeds Jewish community. He was actively involved in the Soviet Jewry campaign during the 1980s. More recently he served as chair of Leeds Masorti community, and on the board of Sinai reform Synagogue. He was on the organizing committee of Leeds Day Limmud, and recently was appointed as its chair. In all these various activities his contribution was immeasurable; the breadth of his interests and associations, the depth of his knowledge, and the civility of his manner were unparalleled. His contributions to the cultural and religious life of the community will be sorely missed.

Despite remaining active in the scientific and Jewish communities, Simon found time in retirement for his long-standing passion for hill-walking and his rekindled love of choral singing. All his life he had a passion for classical music, particularly the twentieth century masters, and history. He loved debate and discussion, talk and listening. His activities were interrupted by a minor stroke earlier this year, and it was during his treatment that pancreatic cancer was discovered. Despite his considerable achievements, Simon was an extraordinarily modest man who would have been slightly bemused at the hundreds of friends and colleagues who turned out on an unseasonably hot Sunday afternoon in early April to pay their respects at his funeral. His spirit and deep sense of humanity live on in Simon and Ruth's sons Jeremy, Adam and Ben and four grandchildren, Lizzie, Cassie, Danny and Raphael.

Colin Harwood, Newcastle

Professor Dr Miloslav Kocur (1929-2006)

Miroslav Kocur Known to so many people in the microbial taxonomy and culture collection worlds, the passing of Miloslav Kocur has meant the loss of a big-hearted man with great personal and professional qualities. He will be greatly missed.

Milos studied microbiology at the University of Brno, Czechoslovakia, and after his graduation was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Microbiology. Here, in 1964, under the encouragement of Professor Martinec, he started the collection of bacteria, and within a short period of time he succeeded in building up an institute of considerable importance. The Czech Collection of Microorganisms (CCM) soon became a member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and the European Culture Collections' Organization (ECCO) to which he contributed significantly in many ways. He served as a WFCC Committee member and was Chairman of the ECCO for two terms. In 1981, he organized the WFCC's IVth International Conference on Culture Collections in Brno and at the same time prepared an international course for the curators of microbial collections from developing countries, under the aegis of UNESCO.

Milos was an enthusiastic champion of rising young microbiologists and a tireless organizer of conferences. He is remembered particularly for the regular events on the taxonomy of bacteria held at the CCM. These and similar events always enabled a rich exchange of ideas and put Brno firmly on the microbiology map. As many of his friends have remarked, Milos was a great bridge-builder.

His professional and communication skills were recognized by many national and international organizations. For several years he was Chairman of the Czechoslovak Society for Microbiology (CSM) and he contributed to the founding of the Federation of Czechoslovak Collections of Micro-organisms and to the co-ordination of its activities. He became Chair, Vice Chair or President of several international organizations, including FEMS (1988-1993), ECCO (1986-1993), CSM (1990-1992 and honorary member), and was an IUMS Member at Large (1991-1994) He was also Vice Chair and Member of various subcommittees of the ICSB (1978-1990), and a member of the editorial boards of three ublications.

In his scientific work he specialized in the taxonomy of bacteria, focusing particularly on the family Micrococcaceae. Over the years, he became a highly regarded specialist with an associated wide breadth of knowledge. He was author/coauthor of several chapters of Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology/Systematic Bacteriology and published over 140 scientific papers. His contribution to taxonomy was also recognized by the naming of a novel bacterial species and a new genus in his honour, Planococcus kocurii.

This record shows that he was a major contributor to bacterial taxonomy and to the development of microbial resource centres, and his professional achievements will long stand the passage of time. But for those that knew and worked with him, he will be remembered best for his cheerful smile, his consideration for others and for his enjoyment of life. We mourn his loss and send deep condolences to his family.

Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, and colleagues

Thomas Henry Flewett (29 June 1922-12 December 2006)

Thomas Henry Flewett MD, FRCPath, FRCP and Consultant Emeritus, was formerly Consultant Virologist at East Birmingham Hospital. Tom was born in India where his father worked for the Indian Civil Service. He was educated at Campbell College, Belfast and graduated with honours in medicine from Queen's University in 1945. After periods working at NIMR, Mill Hill and as a Lecturer at University of Leeds, he was appointed Director of the newly established Regional Virus Laboratory at East Birmingham Hospital. Here his interests in virus diseases and electron microscopy led him to provide a comprehensive service and into research on the viral causes of childhood diarrhoea, an important and worldwide problem. It was also to make his reputation.

Norwalk virus had been discovered in the US in 1971 and other, larger viruses had been seen in gut biopsies in Australia. Tom showed that these latter viruses could be seen readily by EM in stool extracts and, from their wheel-like appearance, called them rotaviruses - a name now used everywhere.

Other viruses (e.g. adenoviruses, caliciviruses, astroviruses) were also noted, but it was his work on rotaviruses that made the greatest impact. Similar rotaviruses were found in the diarrhoeal stools of virtually every animal species in which they were sought. Tom was in the thick of this research that involved collaborators in many countries, many of who visited, and often worked in, his laboratory, which was designated as a WHO Reference and Research Centre for Rotavirus Infections from 1980 until his retirement in 1987.

Tom's work on rotaviruses brought him international fame both as a virologist and as an electron microscopist. He was, inter alia, a World Health Organization consultant in Spain, Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Brazil, Mexico - all countries in which childhood diarrhoea was, and is, a major problem. He was Chairman of the WHO Steering Committee on Viral Diarrhoeal Diseases, 1990-93, and a Member until 1996. He was in demand as a consultant, external examiner, visiting lecturer and journal editor, as well as a friend and helpful colleague. He was also a member of the Board of the Public Health Laboratory Service from 1977 to 1983 and Chairman of the PHLS Committee on Electron Microscopy from 1977 to 1987. He published over 120 papers on a variety of virological topics, many on the viruses of childhood diarrhoea.

The bare factual bones of career do not, though, convey the nature of the man. Small of stature, silver-haired and quick of thought and action, he was a hands-on leader of his laboratory. Naturally short-sighted, he wore thick-rimmed glasses and, like many with the same difficulty when asked to examine something such as an EM negative, he shifted his glasses down his nose and peered over the lenses. This gave him the air of an inquisitive bird, an impression reinforced by a crisp incisive manner and speech in short and rather jerky phrases.

Within his own laboratory, he was tolerant of people, but intolerant of mistakes, and known to all as someone who loved gadgets. He was a born tinkerer, and electron microscopy with its mystique and its machinery suited his temperament exactly. Whenever his microscope developed a fault, the coat was off, the tools were out and the column stripped. Very few had his level of technical knowledge or were so capable of doing maintenance on their own microscope.

Outside the laboratory, his other great love was golf. At his best, he had a handicap of 2 and he remained competitive well into retirement, confirmed by the trophy boards at Moseley Golf Club being peppered with his name. He won their Seniors' Trophy in 1990 and the Over-70s Cup in 1992.

Tom was a major force in the development of British diagnostic virology at the time when it led the world in routine diagnosis. His working life covered the time when it was all new and exciting, and his contribution to virus diagnosis by electron microscopy cannot be over-emphasized. He showed what could be done by dedication, underpinned by sound technical knowledge, and made it fun.

Tom and his wife June were excellent hosts, providing hospitality to the many scientists who visited his laboratory. She predeceased him, but two daughters survive them.

Alasdair Geddes and Dick Madeley

William Terence Coakley (1940-18 November 2006)

William Terence Coakley Professor Terry Coakley passed away on Saturday, 18th November, after a heroic but uncomplaining fight against cancer. He was coming daily to his laboratory, even through his last illness, and with a courageous smile he was always asking how his staff were progressing with the work.

For more than 41 years he contributed his mathematical expertise and physics background to the many hundreds of student projects in progress, firstly in the Microbiology Department (until 1988) and more recently in The School of Pure and Applied Biology and the Cardiff School of Biosciences. His friendly and gentle approach to scientific and personal problems made him a favourite father-figure: his door was often a first-stop for those staff as well as students in need of guidance or consolation. Throughout his career, Terry related the highest levels of professionalism with committed support for his colleagues.

Terry was brought up in Cork, Ireland. His first degree was in Experimental and Mathematical Physics from the National University of Ireland (1961). His MSc (1963), also at the National University of Ireland, was in Experimental Radiation Physics. He then worked in Manchester, where he was employed in the Medical Physics department working on radiation therapy, radioisotopes, medical and biological effects ultrasound. His entire subsequent career was spent in Cardiff. Due largely to his devoted and meticulous experimental work Cardiff University became a world centre for studies on the biological effects of ultrasound. The new Department of Microbiology, housed in two large laboratories in Newport Road as well as in the Main Building in Cathays Park, presented Terry with a wonderful opportunity to apply his deep understanding of physics to biology. This was the subject of his PhD (1968-1971) under the supervision of Professor David Hughes, the first Head of the Department of Microbiology at Cardiff University. As well as important developments in the diagnostic uses of ultrasound, Terry's Group was devoted to the acoustic control of bubble activity during cavitation. Some of his earlier major innovative contributions are still used in most biological laboratories.

Terry continued his work with a series of distinguished sabbatical visitors: Wes Nyborg and Ernest Neppiras (University of Vermont), Floyd Dunn (University of Illinois), Bob Gould (Middleburg College) and Larry Crum of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. He then went on to investigate surface waves at membrane interfaces with Dominique Gallez from the laboratory of the Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist, Illya Prigogine. In 1984, completely new uses of ultrasound were devised in Terry's group, whereby particles and cells can be moved to preferred positions in a standing wave field. Novel ultrasonic chambers were custom- designed and constructed in-house for different applications, such as detection of antigens by the agglutination of antibody coated particles, ultrasonic filtration or more recently for the study of cell-cell interactions.

Clearly the potential of these novel manipulative methods in biophysics and cell biology is widespread, and their wider biomedical and industrial development is still at an early stage. Extensive collaborations across the Cardiff School of Biosciences (between Microbiology and Connective Tissues Research Groups) and the University (with Medical Microbiology), European and American Universities, Medical Centres, Hospitals and biomedical companies signifies the world-wide acclaim that Terry's work has achieved.

Terry became Senior Lecturer in Microbiology in 1977, was awarded his DSc from the National University of Ireland in 1981, became a Reader in 1984, and then became Professor in Biophysics at Cardiff in 1986. He was Head of the Department of Microbiology from 1987 to 1988.

He was a dedicated scientist, always passionate about his work and a genuine person to all who knew him. He was a truly warm, kind, thoughtful and family-loving person who spared all his energy and time in helping people as if they were part of his extended family. His deep erudition, meticulous attention to detail and inspirational guidance of his young disciples will ensure that his work will be continued.

David Lloyd, Cardiff University

Sidney Reuben Elsden (13 April 1915-29 April 2006)

Sidney Reuben Elsden Sidney Elsden, who has died at the age of 91, was Head of the Microbiology Department at the University of Sheffield from 1949 to 1965 and Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Food Research Institute from 1965 to 1977. In addition to his experimental contributions to biochemical microbiology, he was responsible for leading the establishment and early development of both these laboratories. Elsden was an original member and then an Honorary Member of the SGM, serving on Council from 1963 to 1967 and as President from 1969 to 1972. In 1967 he was awarded the Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture.

Sidney Elsden spent his early years in Cambridge and, after attending the Cambridge & County High School for Boys, entered Fitzwilliam House, where he held a Goldsmiths' Company Exhibition, and graduated in 1936 with a double first in the Natural Sciences Tripos. Following a year of research in the Cambridge Biochemistry Department under Dr Marjory Stephenson, who kindled his lifelong interest in micro-organisms, he was appointed to a lectureship in the Physiology Department of Edinburgh University. In 1941 he gained his PhD from Cambridge University for biochemical work on bacteria and on muscle tissue. His long association with the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) began in 1942 when he joined their Unit of Animal Physiology in Cambridge. Here he devised an innovative method for the separation of short-chain fatty acids on silica gel columns and used it to investigate their microbial production in ruminants.

In 1948 Elsden was appointed Senior Lecturer in the University of Sheffield, heading a biochemistry-based sub-department within the Bacteriology Department, and a 1-year postgraduate course in microbiology was introduced in 1950. At that time, the commercial production of biochemical apparatus was in its infancy, but Elsden's foresight and the skills of the Medical Faculty's workshop placed the department in a strong position to exploit new techniques, such as the Hughes press and other methods for the production of bacterial cell-free extracts, radioactive tracers, continuous culture methods and gas-liquid chromatography.

Elsden's research was many-faceted. He was adept at connecting a fistula to a sheep's rumen and he could thus easily obtain rumen contents with their plethora of micro-organisms. Many of these are fastidious anaerobes and, having been exposed to the methods of C.B. van Niel, Elsden was well equipped to isolate and manipulate such bacteria. One of his isolates was an hitherto unknown, large, Gram-negative, non-sporing, anaerobic coccus which produced C1-C6 fatty acids. This organism was eventually adopted as the type species of a new genus and appropriately named Megasphaera elsdenii.

In 1952, Sheffield University created a separate Department of Microbiology with Elsden as its head and the ARC then appointed him Honorary Director of a Unit for Microbiology which they established within the new Department. The research programme expanded steadily and embraced photosynthetic bacteria, growth yields in relation to ATP generation, bacteriophage and bacteriocins as well as numerous aspects of anaerobes. In 1959, the West Riding of Yorkshire endowed a Chair of Microbiology with Elsden as the first incumbent. The Department's increasing reputation attracted a steady flow of postgraduate students and visiting workers, many of them from overseas countries, including Australia, Norway, Sri Lanka and the USA.

In 1965, Elsden started the second phase of his professional career by accepting the Directorship of the new ARC Food Research Institute to be built in Norwich. His careful planning and excellent rapport with the architects resulted in a spacious and elegant building with a good balance of standardized laboratories and specialized areas for services and large equipment. The layout subsequently proved easy to adapt to meet changes in the research programme and safety regulations. The new institute was intended to bring together several of the ARC's staff from research groups in Sheffield, Cambridge, Aberdeen and Ditton in Kent. To facilitate the integration of these diverse groups, a nucleus of staff from each was built up at a temporary laboratory in Norwich in the years immediately before the new building was occupied in 1968. The Institute was sited close to the newly founded University of East Anglia (UEA) which had a strong biological ethos and a close association developed between the two.

Following the Rothschild Report of 1971-72, the research programme was increasingly subjected to more centralized control, with a large part of the Institute's budget coming from work contracted by MAFF. In 1975 a Director's Advisory Board was set up to improve contact with the food processing industry. Major changes followed, including the introduction of work on nutrition and the transfer of work on poultry meat to the Meat Research Institute at Bristol. These changes were well under way by the time Elsden retired in 1977.

Inevitably, Elsden became increasingly involved in a wide range of committee and advisory work relating to food research and biology, both locally and nationally. Despite these pressures he occasionally managed to spend time working with his assistant on properties of clostridia relating to their classification. After retirement, he continued with his scientific interests for a few years at UEA before reverting to his long-standing hobbies of gardening, fishing and cooking. In 1985, the University of Sheffield recognized his distinction as a microbiologist and as Director of the Food Research Institute by awarding him the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.

Sidney Elsden had a lasting interest in new techniques and was keen to ensure that his staff were well equipped in that respect. His attitude to his colleagues was forthright, but encouraging and sympathetic, particularly with regard to personal problems. Early in his career his own domestic life had been clouded by the sudden death of his first wife, Frances. His second wife, Erica, whom he married in 1948, survives him, together with their twin sons. Despite increasing frailty in his final years Sidney retained a lively and good-humoured outlook until his death shortly after his 91st birthday. He leaves behind a wealth of happy and grateful memories among those who were privileged to work with him.

John L. Peel, Norwixh and Bernard A. Fry, Sheffield

Marler Thomas Parker (27 October 1912-25 February 2006)

Marler Thomas Parker M. T. (Tom) Parker, one of the inspirational figures of post-war medical microbiology in addressing our increasing concerns about staphylococcal and other healthcare-associated infections, died on 25 February 2006, aged 94. His work on Staphylococcus aureus - initially the type 80/81 epidemic strain that caused severe hospital infections in the 1950s and later the increasing antibiotic resistance amongst hospital isolates leading to the MRSA problems of the 21st century - is as relevant to medical practice today as when he led the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) Cross-Infection Reference Laboratory through the 1960s and 1970s.

Tom was born on 27 October 1912 in North Walsham, Norfolk, and obtained his senior schooling at Paston Grammar School (1923-1931). He went on to Downing College, Cambridge, as an exhibitioner, reading Natural Sciences with specialism in Pathology (1931-1934), gaining first-class grades in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos. He then completed his medical studies at Charing Cross Hospital, London, qualifying MB, BChir (Cantab.) in 1937, and continuing there as a House Physician. In 1938, he began a Studentship in Pathology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and gained the Diploma of Bacteriology (London) with distinction in 1939 from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the exacting standards of W. W. C. Topley and G. S. Wilson.

The Second World War interrupted his academic studies. He held strong anti-fascist convictions and he enlisted in the armed forces at the outbreak of war in 1939. Through to 1945, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a specialist pathologist, initially in the UK and then in India and Burma with the rank of Major. He made lasting friendships in India with memorable colleagues including James Rhind, Jerry Morris and Reg Passmore. He had graphic stories of his experiences in Lucknow and Calcutta and in his travels when on leave, with sad accounts of the terrible famine and the diseases that he witnessed at first hand. In Assam, his hospital unit supported Field-Marshal Slim's advance and he was especially proud of his laboratory's record in ensuring prompt diagnosis and effective treatment of the many patients who developed the debilitating infections that went with military operations in difficult conditions in a tropical climate. His unit was then shipped to Rangoon, arriving on the day after the Japanese retreat, and he was faced with establishing services in a ransacked infirmary that had even lost its water taps.

Early in 1946, on his return to civilian life, he joined the newly established PHLS under the directorship of G. S. (later Sir Graham) Wilson. Tom's first PHLS job was as Director of the Area Public Health Laboratory at Carmarthen, but in 1948 he moved to Manchester as Consultant Microbiologist and Director of the Regional Public Health Laboratory. There, his knowledge and experience were quickly acknowledged and he was recruited to deliver classes in the Manchester University Dip. Bact. course as a specialist teacher. His research at the time started to focus on S. aureus as a cause of severe hospital infections and in 1956 his thesis on S. aureus earned him a Cambridge Doctorate of Medicine.

In 1961, he was appointed Director of the Cross-Infection Reference Laboratory at the Central Public Health Laboratory, Colindale, London, a post he held with distinction until his retirement in 1978. Dr Parker was pivotal in his role as Director in bringing together the staphylococcus and streptococcus reference laboratories working on the qualitative differences in the pathogenic potential of these organisms. Throughout the 57-year history of the PHLS, this laboratory played a crucial role in investigating and understanding healthcare-associated infections, particularly those caused by S. aureus and β-haemolytic streptococci, and helping to devise preventive strategies that remain at the heart of the current Department of Health programme to combat MRSA. Tom had directed the laboratory for over half of its first 30 years. During that time many collaborations were established with colleagues and centres overseas which formed the foundation of the international links that remain to this day.

Tom's unassuming personality, integrity, wide range of expertise, and his friendly and helpful manner endeared him to all his colleagues and his many friends. It was inevitable that his help and influence would be widely sought within the discipline of medical microbiology, particularly with reference to staphylococci, streptococci and aspects of bacterial cross-infection, and he gave his time unstintingly to students, trainees and senior colleagues alike. He served on a host of international committees, and his contributions to WHO Working Groups, and his Short-Term WHO Consultantships in the Sudan, India and Burma (1974, 1976, 1980), all testify to the high regard in which he was held abroad. He had numerous collaborators across the world. His daughter Judith recalls a stream of visitors to the family home at Radlett in the 1960s, including Lewis Wannamaker (Minnesota), Theo Poon-King (Trinidad) and Hugh Dillon (Birmingham, AL, USA), but there were many, many more. He was a Founder Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath 1964), was appointed a Corresponding Member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft f?r Hygiene und Mikrobiologie (1978), and was President of the Hospital Infection Society from 1984 to 1988. In 1983, he was awarded Honorary Membership of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland in particular recognition of his contribution to the Society's journals for almost 30 years. In turn, Tom's care for members of his staff is epitomized by his support for Winston Maxted, a colleague in his laboratory at Colindale, who was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden in recognition of his work on streptococci.

The day-to-day responsibilities of a hospital laboratory in relation to public health were exemplified by Tom's work in Carmarthen and Manchester, and are reflected in the requirement from the current Chief Medical Officer (England) that all microbiology laboratories should fulfil their public health responsibilities. In addition to aspects of hospital cross-infection that constantly required attention, there were innumerable urgent requests to identify the agents of infectious diseases and to check their antibiotic sensitivities or otherwise to guide treatment options. Tom carried all of these responsibilities with exemplary calmness and real ability.

One of Tom's greatest legacies to medical microbiology was his remarkable service as an editor of, and a significant contributor to, our journals and to Topley and Wilson's authoritative text on the Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity, which latterly became Microbiology and Microbial Infections. He worked tirelessly and with daunting commitment in these roles. For the 8th edition of the textbook in 1990, for which he and Leslie Collier were the two General Editors, he personally checked each of more than 2,600 pages of text produced by 125 authors from around the world. He worked on five editions of this book (our 'professional bible' over the years) from 1964 to 1998. Those of us who knew Tom's standards in relation to his editorial work, with the Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology and subsequently (for nearly 20 years) with the Journal of Medical Microbiology, found him a demanding and impressive colleague. We admired him hugely and it was quite impossible to thank him as he waved away our expressions of gratitude with a rare smile and a slight flourish of his pipe. He was instrumental in setting the standard for scientific rigour and accuracy of expression in the journal. He expected those standards of his colleagues, but was also prepared to spend endless time guiding would-be editors as well as helping innumerable authors (especially those for whom English was not their native language) to re-work their submitted articles into worthy scientific presentations. He created the rehabilitation part of his role as rejection and rehabilitation editor of the Journal of Medical Microbiology as an important teaching commitment and many authors benefited from 'distance learning tutorials' over the re-working of their papers - a hard act to follow.

Tom and his wife Beryl were married in October 1938. Their son David was born in 1940 and their daughter Judith in 1950. Tom's wider interests were reading, gardening, classical music and opera. He was, however, a dedicated family man and always found time, between all of the other activities for hill-walking with the family, for beach days with sandcastles and fossil-hunting, and for picking blackberries or visiting stately homes.

After moving to Beckenham in 1987, he started on yet another garden and took up serious studies of Italian and Philosophy at Birkbeck College, only withdrawing from Philosophy classes when, in his late eighties, he felt that his essays were no longer up to standard. Beryl died in 1996 and, latterly, Tom moved to Sunrise at Frognal House, Sidcup, where he made new friendships and found an alpine garden needing his attention. He had an extended illness with surgery in December 2004, but he returned to independent living in Sunrise with his beloved books, his paintings, his music and his view of the garden that he had made. He died peacefully in Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup. At the funeral, his son, Professor David Parker, talked warmly of his father as a marvellous inspiration and mentor. This is abundantly true for everyone who met Tom or who worked with such a remarkable man.

J. Gerald Collee, Edinburgh, Brian I. Duerden, Department of Health, London, and Androulla Efstratiou, Health Protection Agency, London

Professor J.R. Quayle FRS (18 November 1926-26 February 2006)

Professor J.R. Quayle John Rodney (Rod) Quayle was born and grew up in Mold, North Wales. Following his graduation in Chemistry from University College of North Wales, Bangor in 1946 he did a PhD with Professor E.D. Hughes, FRS in physical organic chemistry. His obvious talents were recognized with a senior research award from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and by Professor A.R. (later Lord) Todd who picked him to study the chemistry of blood pigments in Cambridge where he, unusually, took a second PhD in 1951. It was his research on photosynthesis with Professor Melvin Calvin at Berkeley that ignited his career in microbial C1 metabolism.

It was with Calvin that he published the classic paper on the carboxylation of ribulose bisphosphate to phosphoglycerate in cell extracts of Chlorella in 1954. Since then he had been recognized universally as being the godfather of the subject who had tutored and inspired many of us with his knowledge and insight which was far broader than carbon metabolism. This lasted right up to the late 1980s when his appointment as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bath in 1983 somewhat curtailed his active involvement in the subject, although he did Chair the British National Committee for Microbiology (1985-1990). Nevertheless, it did not diminish his interest and role as being adviser, confidante and unraveller of some of the more complex issues of C1 metabolism. Indeed he was in demand as a plenary speaker long after his move to Bath.

Rod returned from Calvin's lab in 1955 with a brief foray into pyrethrum insecticides at the Tropical Products Institute in London moving swiftly to Sir Hans Krebs' laboratory in 1956 to continue his passion for the metabolism of C1 and C2 compounds when he collaborated with Hans (now Professor Sir) Kornberg and showed that bacterial growth on acetate involved the glyoxylate cycle. He used his experience in photosynthesis from Calvin's lab with labelled compounds to set out evaluating the metabolism of methanol, formate and carbon dioxide in bacteria. His work led to the discovery of the serine pathway and, from studies with methane-oxidizing bacteria, the ribulose monophosphate cycle that paved the way for the discovery of a variety of cycles and pathways in C1-utilizing bacteria and yeasts. He also had a significant role to play in the elucidation of a cyclic pathway of formaldehyde oxidation (the prevailing routes were linear), the dihydroxyacetone pathway of formaldehyde incorporation in yeast and the identification that the oxidation of methane to methanol in methanotrophs proceeded via a monooxygenase using dioxygen rather than water as the source of oxygen in the methanol.

Much of this work was done during his tenure as senior lecturer (1963-1965) and then Professor (1965-1983) at Sheffield University. Rod's pioneering work was recognized by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the award of the CIBA Medal and Prize of the Biochemical Society, both in 1978. He served as President of the SGM from 1990 to 1993 and was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Göttingen (1989), Bath (1992) and Sheffield (1992).

But most of all Rod will be remembered by most who knew him as the voice of reason, a serious intellect, generous in his advice and help in bringing a compassionate and sympathetic understanding of anyone's problems, be they be personal or scientific. His valedictory lecture at the 1995 symposium on microbial growth on C1 compounds in San Diego was typical of the man, in which he highlighted all the achievements since the first symposium 22 years earlier in Edinburgh and played scant attention to his own discoveries, even though these had influenced nearly every facet of C1 metabolism for over 30 years. In retirement he kept a strong interest in local area health authority matters and was a member of the Board of the Bath Festivals Trust, the Bristol Exploratory and member of the Council of the Bath Institute of Medical Engineering.

He is survived by his wife Yvonne and children (Susan and Rupert).

Howard Dalton, DEFRA

Professor Carlos Hormaeche (24 December 1940-29 March 2005)

Professor Carlos Hormaeche has died in a microlight aeroplane crash in Uruguay. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was multi-talented and could have pursued several careers, but his calling to research was greatest. He graduated from medical school in Montevideo and developed a strong and active interest in microbiology.

In 1981, I had just finished my second year as an undergraduate at Cambridge when we first met. I turned up to work in his laboratory as a prelude to my final year Part II research project, to discover that he was about to go off on a month's vacation. He outlined the project, told me that I could use the laboratory while he was away and then let me get on with it. That was the way it was in Cambridge in those days: no spoon-feeding! With this and subsequent experiences during my PhD with Carlos he liberated me intellectually and personally, an experience I think many have shared, and for which I will always be grateful.

Carlos was very supportive and kind to his students, but expected respect for the science and absolute engagement in the problem in return. He was a supreme enthusiast and had an amazing and encyclopaedic knowledge of bacterial pathogenesis, being able to quote chapter and verse from the literature and taking it as a personal affront if he could not remember the page numbers from a reference from 20 years ago. This professional pride rubbed off on those around him, and has always inspired me to try to be similarly engaged.

Carlos, his wife Raquel Demarco, and their young son Sebastian, arrived in Cambridge in 1972 where Carlos started a PhD in the laboratory of Professor Robin Coombs. When the military dictatorship took power in Uruguay in 1973, Carlos and Raquel courageously protested at the injustices taking place, and took active roles in human rights organizations. The family thus had to remain in England until the late 1980s when democracy was restored in Uruguay.

After his PhD he continued his research on immunity to Salmonella infections in the Department of Pathology. He became a University Demonstrator and in 1980 was awarded a Lectureship in the same department. In 1994 Carlos became Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Newcastle. He re-organized and re-invigorated this Department leading to it moving from a 2 to a 5* rating in the RAE of 2001.

His science focused on infectious disease and mainly on mechanisms of resistance and immunity to Salmonella infection. His PhD thesis unravelled for the first time the complexities of the natural genetic resistance of mice to Salmonella typhimurium infection, as a model for typhoid fever. He was able to show that the ity gene controlled early proliferation of salmonellae in the reticulo-endothelial system, that resident macrophages were key to this, and that this was a mechanism distinct from acquired resistance and immunity. A key feature of this work was to recognize the need to follow the growth dynamics of the bacteria in vivo, rather than just to rely on death, as a measure of resistance. This lesson has been rather forgotten in recent literature.

I was his first PhD student, and we set out to try to find out more about what T cells and B cells were doing to control Salmonella infection after the initial phase of genetic resistance had passed. This was an intense, highly creative and immensely enjoyable time, with the Department of Pathology under the leadership of Peter Wildy being a fantastic place to work. Carlos branched out into vaccinology when he met Gordon Dougan at Wellcome Biotech, where he eventually spent a sabbatical, ostensibly learning molecular biology but in addition invigorating and inspiring the people in the laboratory there to great things. During this time live attenuated Salmonella vaccine strains started emerging, especially from the laboratory of Bruce Stocker at Stanford, who became a strong colleague and friend. These provided a new way for Carlos to ask questions about the immune response to salmonellae, but also led to his being able to start developing ideas about delivery of antigens to the immune system via these live attenuated carriers. Carlos made major contributions in this area, not just in understanding how the basic biology and immunology of these systems work, but also in generating vaccines with real potential for exploitation. I am sure that these types of multivalent vaccine will be used, especially in the developing world, but first we will have to overcome Luddite tendencies to reject anything that has been genetically manipulated, and a political and industrial system of vaccine development that is incompatible with the successful development of new vaccines for poor countries.

Carlos continued with these scientific themes throughout his career. He took early retirement from Newcastle after his RAE triumph and I was delighted to be able to offer him space in my laboratory at the Cambridge Veterinary School to continue his research. His latest enthusiasm was to use Salmonella vaccine strains to deliver antigens from the worm Echinococcus to dogs to try to break the transmission chain that leads to humans with hydatidosis. This is a continuing collaborative effort between Cambridge and scientists in Lyon, Montevideo, Tunisia and Morocco: typical of the type of multinational collaboration that Carlos was so good at generating and fostering. Carlos and Raquel spent about half the year here in Cambridge and the other half in Uruguay where they had built a new and beautiful house near Montevideo. This was idyllic in many ways, and amongst the benefits it allowed stronger links to be developed between scientists in the UK and Uruguay.

Carlos was very generous with his time, and always gave back to his professional colleagues more than he took. He gave service to the SGM and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Microbiology of the ASM.

Carlos was larger than life. He was the type of man to develop an enthusiasm, go into it until he understood everything about it, then practice it assiduously. Such was his fascination with flying. He owned a microlight plane in England and would always be out flying if the weather was remotely sunny. He was a very careful and thorough pilot, and it is with some incomprehension that I contemplate the fact the he died as a passenger in a microlight being piloted by someone else. An appalling waste of a superb man.

Carlos was a much loved and highly respected man and scientific colleague, and we will all miss him terribly.

Duncan Maskell, University of Cambridge

Ernest Frederick Gale FRS (15 July 1914-7 March 2005)

Ernest Gale, who has died at the age of 90, was Professor of Chemical Microbiology in the University of Cambridge from 1960 to 1981. He made a significant contribution to the Society's activities during its early years. His major contribution to microbiology was in emphasizing the chemical and enzymatic basis of microbial activities, at a time when many cellular components and biochemicals were ill-defined. These ideas were published in 1947 in the ground-breaking book The Chemical Activities of Bacteria.

Ernest Gale spent 50 years in Cambridge, completing a degree in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) in 1936 and then a PhD in the Department of Biochemistry under the direction of the late Dr Marjory Stephenson, FRS, for studies on the adaptation of sugar-metabolizing enzymes in Escherichia coli and factors that influence the deamination of amino acids. This research led to a rapid and accurate method of estimating free amino acids, which in turn facilitated the study of the movement of amino acids into and out of bacterial cells. Using naturally occurring amino acid auxotrophic strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Gale showed that large intracellular concentrations of amino acids could be accumulated. He was to be one of the first to use radiolabelled amino acids, although his initial approach to Amersham to supply him with ¹⁴C-amino acids was met by resistance and the comment that there would be no general scientific market for such esoteric products!

During the 1950s, Gale worked on the involvement of RNA in the incorporation of amino acids into protein, using an in vitro system from S. aureus. At that time it was not possible to separate the different types of RNA, but he clearly saw that there were separate effects, that a labile form of RNA was involved in enzyme induction and synthesis, and moreover that DNA was responsible for organizing the involvement of RNA in protein synthesis. With hindsight it is possible to distinguish the effects of mRNA and tRNA in the results obtained, but at the time they were part of a lively controversy, which Gale eventually left to the likes of Crick and Monod to resolve.

Instead, Gale turned his attentions to the mode of action of antibiotics, triggered not only by the finding that penicillin altered bacterial permeability to amino acids and inhibited synthesis of the cell wall, but also to an incident during World War II. Gale had received from ICI a small sample of penicillin, but before he could use it for laboratory experiments he received an emotional call from a clinical colleague to help a nurse dying of a staphylococcal infection. Administration of the penicillin produced a dramatic improvement in the nurse's condition, but there was insufficient to continue treatment and she died. This experience had a profound effect on Gale who devoted the rest of his scientific career to the study of antibiotics. A succession of PhD students and academic visitors to his laboratories investigated a wide range of antibiotics, shedding light not only on their modes of action, but also the elucidation of basic aspects of bacterial metabolism. His book The Molecular Basis of Antibiotic Action remains a classic text. Later he turned his attention to antifungal antibiotics, particularly the polyenes and mechanisms of resistance.

The originality of Gale's research and its significance for the development of microbiology was marked by the award of the ScD degree in 1947 and his election as a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1953. In 1948 he became Director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Chemical Microbiology or 'Microbiology Unit' (MBU) within the Department of Biochemistry, and in 1960 the University of Cambridge created a personal Chair of Chemical Microbiology for him. Although he was an efficient administrator, Gale was happiest doing research and even when he was Acting Head of the Biochemistry Department he still set aside a day when he could work uninterruptedly in the laboratory. He held many distinguished lectureships at home and abroad and travelled widely giving lectures in Russia, the USA and Australia. He sat on several national and international committees, including the International Union of Biochemistry Commission on Enzymes from 1957 to 1961.

Ernest Gale was an excellent lecturer and laboratory teacher, his great enthusiasm for his subject being very evident. He was much involved in the radical reorganization of undergraduate teaching at Cambridge in the mid-60s that saw the replacement of older disciplines with the newer concepts of biology of cells. As a PhD supervisor, his aim was to instil an ability in his students to think for themselves: he had an uncanny ability to guide whilst allowing the freedom to explore without undue pressure. Testimony to the success of his approach is found in the large number of his students who have become leaders in academia and industry.

Ernest Gale retired in 1983, moving from Cambridge to live in Salcombe, Devon, where regular family holidays had been spent for many years. In retirement he spent his time walking and swimming, reading thrillers not scientific papers, and developing his considerable skills as a wood carver. The last years of his life were blighted by virtually complete loss of memory, and were spent in London closer to his family. To the end he remained unassuming and dignified, somewhat ironically succumbing to a pneumonia that not even the antibiotics that he had studied for a professional lifetime could cure.

Nick Russell, Imperial College London

Professor June Lascelles (23 January 1924-1 July 2004)

June Lascelles, Professor Emerita of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, died at her home in Los Angeles, aged 80. June devoted her life to microbial biochemistry and to those she taught and supervised. She had a tremendous and infectious enthusiasm for research on a wide variety of micro-organisms, and she is particularly well known for her work on the purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria. Her pioneering physiological and biochemical studies, which frequently exploited mutants, provided fundamental insights into tetrapyrrole biosynthesis and other metabolic processes, laying down foundations and concepts that are still achieving new relevance in the post-genomic era.

June Lascelles was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. She graduated from the University of Sydney with a First Class BSc degree in Biochemistry in 1944, followed by an MSc in 1947. She was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Fellowship and elected to work in the Microbiology Unit of the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford. Her supervisor was Donald Woods and with him she established that pAB is converted to folic acid, that the conversion rate is tenfold higher in sulfonamide-resistant organisms and that folates are involved in amino acid biosynthesis. After receiving a DPhil in 1952, June stayed in Oxford and was appointed Lecturer in Microbial Biochemistry in 1960.

At this stage she developed new projects in microbial biochemistry, making very significant contributions to our understanding of the general and respiratory metabolism of Staphylococcus aureus, the C- and inorganic S-metabolism of photosynthetic bacteria, and she achieved early distinction for her contribution to microbial porphyrin synthesis. An important motivating factor for these studies was the value then attached to the use of bacteria to inform on the basic metabolites and metabolic reactions of higher organisms. Her tremendous enthusiasm for a wide diversity of micro-organisms was confirmed during an exciting year (1956/7) spent with C.B. van Niel at the Hopkins Marine Station (California) isolating and studying various 'exotics' like Thiovulum, Thiothrix and Cytophaga as well many species of anoxygenic photosynthetics. Her broad approach is reflected in publications addressing fundamental metabolic problems in at least 20 species ranging from Staphylococcus to Tetrahymena, Campylobacter to Physarum, and Paracoccus to purple non-sulfur photosynthetics.

In 1965 June was invited to a Chair in Bacteriology at the University of California, Los Angeles. A major theme of June's research from 1955 to 1980 was the synthesis and regulation of haem and bacteriochlorophyll (Bchl) in Rhododobacter sphaeroides. This classic study established that light and oxygen affect the synthesis of several enzymes used in the biosynthesis of both haem and Bchl, and provided the basis of our current understanding of tetrapyrrole synthesis in photosynthetic bacteria. She was one of the first to select mutants having defects in tetrapyrrole synthesis, and exploit them in identifying individual enzymic steps in the biosynthetic pathways. June's influential scientific reviews and exceptional editorial and reviewing skills were widely valued by scientists, publishers and grant-awarding bodies, worldwide. June retired in 1989 and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990. She worked every day until 2 years before her death.

June was modest and self-effacing but forthright, plain-speaking, proud of her Australian heritage, and seriously professional. Her industry and thoroughness are legendary. She was an extremely acute and reliable critic and reporter of both scientific matters and human affairs. She had a very positive attitude to life, a great sense of humour, and a highly developed social conscience. She was no respecter of class, royalty or the Church, and impatient of some of the ancient practices of Oxford college life. Most of all she will be remembered for her great kindness and generosity to young scientists. She was always approachable, prepared to listen, took a genuine interest in their work, and gave wise counsel and encouragement. Her death was announced to Departmental colleagues in words that included, 'She will be missed as an accomplished scholar, dedicated learner, highly respected experimentalist, unique role model and rare friend'.

John R. Guest, University of Sheffield, UK, & Howard Gest, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

Professor Stanley (Stan) Williams

StanWilliams Emeritus Professor Stan Williams, University of Liverpool, died on Thursday 23rd September 2004. He spent almost his entire academic life at the University and met his wife Kath when they were both undergraduates there. Latterly, Stan was Professor of Botany (1987-1992), Professor of Microbiology (1992-1996) and Head of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology prior to the formation of the School of Biological Sciences, a process to which he gave his support before retiring.

Although Stan spent the great majority of his time in Liverpool, he had a prominent profile as a scientist on the international stage. Stan was a pioneer in the field of actinomycete biology and his research was devoted to the study of actinomycete taxonomy and ecology, which was of particular interest to the pharmaceutical industry for which this group of organisms is such a rich source of antibiotics.

His appointment to the Bergey Trust - the international body that oversees bacterial systematics - and the important work he did on their behalf is testament to his stature, but the final accolade came in 2000 when he had a genus of bacteria named after him:

'Williamsia named to honour a British Microbiologist for his numerous contributions to the taxonomy and ecology of actinomycetes'.

Stan numbered many friends amongst his colleagues right across the University and will be sadly missed.

Fred Brown (31 January 1925-20 February 2004)

Fred Brown Members of the Society will be saddened to learn of the death of Fred Brown, FRS OBE, at the age of 79 on 20 February, 2004. With his passing we lose another of the 'old school' of virologists who have had a major impact on their chosen discipline over the past half century. Fred had a long and influential relationship with the SGM and was elected as an honorary member in 1991. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of General Virology from 1975 to 1980 and was its most prolific single contributor.

Fred hailed from Burnley and was a Lancastrian through and through. After a brilliant career at Burnley Grammar School, of which he was school, cricket and football captain, he studied chemistry at the University of Manchester. Having obtained a first class degree he went on to study carbohydrate chemistry for his doctoral degree. After working for short spells at the Bristol University's Fruit and Vegetable Preservation Station, the Hannah Dairy Research Institute and the Christie Hospital, Fred joined the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Institute (as it was then) at Pirbright in 1955, where he launched a career in virology that spanned almost 50 years. There he established a molecular virology laboratory that rivalled the best in the world for FMDV research. His vision and energy inspired both the permanent staff at the Institute and a long list of national and international visitors. He left the Institute to join Wellcome Biotech as head of virology in 1983. He retired from Wellcome in 1990 and moved to the USA to continue working on FMDV at the USDA laboratory at Plum Island. He moved back to the UK just 5 weeks before his death.

Fred's training as a chemist left him with a passionate desire to understand the molecular details of the structure and function of viruses. When he entered the field of FMDV little was known about the fine detail of structure and composition of the virus. During his long career he saw this change dramatically, in a large part due to his own efforts, from one in which the number of proteins in the virus particle was unknown to the current situation in which the disposition of (nearly) all of the atoms in the virion is known, as is the precise nucleotide sequence of the genomic RNA of many serotypes and strains. Just a few of the many steps along this path to knowledge in which Fred was directly involved include: demonstration of the infectivity of the viral RNA, unravelling the antigenic structure of the virus, determining nucleotide sequences of the viral RNA and the crystal structure of the virus particle. Although we have come a long way, Fred would be the first to admit that we still have a long way to go and he was still involved in FMDV research until a few weeks before his death. Fred is best remembered for his Olympian status in the FMDV world, but he also had broader virological interests. For example, he was particularly supportive of the International Committee for the Taxonomy of Viruses which he served from 1968 until 1987, being President from 1981 to 1987.

Although devoted to fundamental research, Fred was always keen on maximizing the practical application of his findings. For example, he pioneered the development of alternatives to formaldehyde as the inactivating agent for FMD vaccines, so providing the means to eliminate the risk posed by residual live virus. Much later he demonstrated through molecular 'detective' work that an outbreak in northern France in 1981 was, in fact, due to improperly inactivated vaccine. He studied viruses such as VSV, VEV and SVDV that could be clinically confused with FMD in part to improve differential diagnosis. He was always interested in vaccine development and became deeply involved in attempts to revolutionize vaccine production using synthetic peptides.

Fred was always a man of strong views and convictions (a typical northerner) which were usually bluntly expressed. These characteristics made him a valued committee member and he was asked to serve on many, such as the Tyrrell committee on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1981 and he was awarded the OBE in 1999 in recognition of his service to British science. Fred did not moderate his opinions during the catastrophic UK outbreak of FMD in 2001 and was a strong advocate of vaccination; it is probably lucky that he was awarded his 'gong' before that tragedy emerged.

Fred was always highly supportive of young scientists and there are many British (and other) virologists currently enjoying successful careers who can look back fondly on their memories of Fred's support and generosity in their formative years. He is survived by his wife, Audrey, who is well known to many in the SGM, and their two sons, Roger and Bill.

Farewell, Fred.

Dave Rowlands is Professor of Molecular Virology in the Division of Microbiology, School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

David Hughes (10 April 1915-7 June 2003)

David Hughes Professor David E. Hughes was the first Professor of Microbiology at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (University College Cardiff), from 1964 to 1982. Hughes brought to the Cardiff department his enormous vitality and drive; he was a dynamo, and he made everything seem possible. His vast experience ('as a problem-solver; I started as a chemist, then became a biochemist, and now I don't know what I am') was liberally shared in seminars by undergraduates and senior staff alike. His sense of fun and of the ridiculous was infectious. Twenty-seven of the students from an era that has become to many la belle epoque of Cardiff microbiology have to date become Professors.

An iconoclastic figure, he is remembered for his devotion to communication of the importance of microbiology to the general public, his great curiosity, insight, wisdom and humanity. He was well known for his outspoken and dismissive attitude to administrative red tape and pomposity.

He had no time for people who talk about education; he was above all a practical scientist, and his attitude to teaching and learning was pragmatic and flexible. However, sometimes he was a master of self-contradiction. Thus he was impatient of our peers from the humanities ('people who don't know how to wire a plug'), and yet his own self-taught and eclectic understanding of ancient cultures, philosophy and the fine arts often left his younger colleagues astonished.

Born in Islington at the beginning of the First World War, he left school at 15 to become a microanalytical laboratory assistant at University College, London. During his training as a microanalyst one of his first tasks was to process thousands of gallons of pregnant mares' urine, collected himself daily from the local stables across the road. This work in the laboratory of Professor Guy Marrian led eventually to the crystallization of oestradiol, the first sex hormone to be isolated. Later David Hughes worked with Sir Jack Drummond and Professor F.G. Young. His first involvement in microbiology came when Sir Paul Fildes set up the MRC Unit for Bacterial Nutrition; this group established the role of the B-group vitamins in bacterial growth, and more specifically, the action of the sulphonamide drugs as competitive inhibitors of p-aminobenzoic acid. This for the first time established a rationale of antibacterial chemotherapy and paved the way for the successful treatment of infections. Later during the year, David Hughes (now a senior technician) and Professor Henry McIlwain were transferred to the Department of Pharmacology at Sheffield by invitation of Professor H.A. (later Sir Hans) Krebs. A BSc in Biochemistry was followed in 1953 by a PhD for work on the synthesis of the nicotinamide nucleotides in bacteria. He joined the Unit for Research in Cell Metabolism at is inception in 1974 and moved with Krebs to Oxford in 1954. His work at Sheffield included the invention of a press for the breakage of bacteria ('Brute force and bloody ignorance - their walls are as strong as reinforced concrete') driven by the impact of a very heavy weight falling down a drainpipe. The Hughes Press, extensively used worldwide for the release of enzymes, was described by its inventor (in his citation classic) as 'a simple, perhaps crude device: 'crude, Hughes crush' is now accepted in some journals. The comma is sometimes misplaced, I suspect deliberately'. In 1961, he spent a year as visiting Professor in the Microbiology Department of Dartmouth Medical School at Hanover, New Hampshire, where he worked with Dr Clark Gray and Julian Wimpenny on the effects of anaerobiosis and nitrate on enzyme activities in bacteria. His work on the biological effects and uses of ultrasound (with Wes Nyborg, Ernest Neppiras , Terry Coakley, Floyd Dunn, and others) won him a prize from the American Acoustic Society.

On arrival at the age of 49 at Cardiff, to his first academic appointment, his pioneering work on microbial structure and function received a five-year period of support in the MRC Group established under his direction. Subsequent achievements included activities of the Wolfson Laboratory for industrial microbiology, including with Mr Ted Hill, some of the earliest work on bioremediation of oil spillage in coastal waters (Torrey Canyon Disaster, off the Cornish coast in 1967). Over the next decade this group pioneered the scientific study of large scale anaerobic digestion treatment plants for the treatment of farm and domestic wastes and the recovery and use of methane.

In the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, General Bacteriology had been taught by Professor R. McLean in the Botany Department since 1946; a microbiology degree course was in place from 1958. At the time of its foundation under David Hughes as its first Professor, the independent Department in Cardiff was one of only five in the UK in 1964. Encouraged and supported by our first-rate young new Principal, Bill Bevan, it expanded rapidly to a total of 10 academic staff; the annual student intake was restricted to less than 20,'lest we loose the family atmosphere of the place'. It soon became a hive of activity and the egalitarian attitude of the leader ensured an unusually happy working place.

Collaborative work across disciplines included work on civil and mechanical engineering and metallurgy projects as well as more traditional ones in agriculture and medicine. Work on microbial growth and differentiation and novel continuous culture systems was also pursued. As a highly energetic leader and innovator, as well as a mentor for young scientists, David Hughes made a lasting and highly influential contribution.

In his long retirement Hughes was able to continue his wide-ranging artistic activities. He had a long-standing interest in archaeology, philosophy and in left-wing politics as well as science. He remarried and divided his time fairly between Spain and St Neots.

At the 25th joint annual meeting of the Microbiology Departments of the Aberystwyth and Cardiff Colleges of the University of Wales, held at Gregynog in 1998, he gave a memorable lecture about his early introduction to science by inspired teachers in East London, and his early years as a lab boy. It was the last time we were to hear about his unusually interesting formative years.

He was predeceased by Ivy and Gwen; he is survived by his third wife, Sylvia, his children, Mary, Stephen and Richard, and his stepchildren Brenda and Denny.

David Lloyd, Cardiff, UK

John Smith (8 December 1924-22 November 2003)

John Smith, a pioneer in the field of nucleic acid research, helped to establish the structure of RNA and to discover the methylation of the bases in bacterial DNA. The information about the structure of RNA was crucial to the double-stranded model of DNA proposed by Watson and Crick. Later, he helped to unravel protein synthesis by establishing key properties of transfer-RNA molecules.

John Derek Smith, the only child of an insurance inspector, was born in Southampton on 8 December 1924. His early life was unhappy, being marked by the death of both parents in a flu epidemic when he was 5 years old. He was brought up in Wetherby by an aunt, and he spent holiday periods in Worthing with another aunt. He attended, first, The Convent High School in Wetherby and then King James' Grammar School in Knaresborough. In both schools he was head boy. In 1942 he went up to Clare College, Cambridge, to study Botany. After graduation, he joined the Agricultural Research Council's virus research unit at the Molteno Institute. Here, he and Roy Markham worked out how to separate by paper electrophoresis single nucleotides and small oligonucleotides, obtained from the RNA genomes of plant and animal viruses. They showed that under the influence of a high voltage, the ribonucleotides and oligoribonucleotides migrate across the moist paper with mobilities that decrease with increasing size. Much later, the procedure became developed into the separation of nucleic acid fragments by gel electrophoresis for sequencing both RNA and DNA. Smith and Markham shared their results with colleagues with common interests in the Chemistry Department, and, by 1952, thanks to their joint efforts, the chemical structure of RNA had been established. In the same year, Watson and Crick, also in Cambridge, and with knowledge of the chemical analysis of RNA, built the iconic double helical model of DNA.

Smith continued his work at the Molteno Institute where, with David Dunn, he discovered the unexpected methylation of DNA bases in bacteria. At the time, the biological significance of this finding was not understood, but it is now known that bacteria methylate their DNA bases as part of a defence mechanism to allow the DNA of invading viruses to be recognized and digested selectively by bacterial restriction endonucleases.

In the late 1950s Smith went to work first at Berkeley and then at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) where he demonstrated that polyoma is a DNA virus. In 1962 he was recruited back to Cambridge as a permanent member of staff of the newly founded Laboratory of Molecular Biology, joining Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in the Division of Molecular Genetics, where he remained until his retirement in 1988.

In the 1960s Smith took part in research to understand the process of how information encoded in DNA is used to make specific proteins. In the late 1950s Francis Crick had proposed that transfer of information from DNA is mediated by adaptor RNA molecules (later called transfer- or tRNAs) carrying specific amino acids, which would then be arranged in the correct order specified in the sequence of the messenger RNA. In 1964 Sydney Brenner found that a mutation in one tRNA overcame nonsense codons in the messenger RNA. Instead of terminating, the protein chain continued to elongate, and apparently, the mutation had changed the genetic code of the organism. Smith and his colleagues demonstrated that each tRNA has an anti-codon region complementary to the corresponding codon in the message, and that mutations of the anti-codon of one particular tRNA alter its properties making it complementary to a codon that was not recognized usually, allowing it to be read as a specific amino acid.

Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. He was a member of the Society for General Microbiology from 1945 and one of the Society''s longest standing members.

John Smith was self-effacing, kind and humane. He was generous with his time and ideas, given freely without any expectation of personal benefit. He influenced and was respected by a wide range of young scientists, many of them now distinguished across different areas of molecular biology. He loved to converse, often with a cigarette in one hand and pint of beer in the other, about diverse topics, including science, the history of scientific discoveries and politics.

His marriage to Ruth Aney was dissolved in 1968.

Professor Sir John Walker, The Medical Research Council Dunn Human Nutrition Unit, Cambridge, UK

Jane Allen (14 December 1967-8 November 2003)

Jane Allen (Jane Kaye) died suddenly and unexpectedly on 8 November 2003. The virological community in the UK have lost a still rising star who made a series of seminal contributions in the field of HIV.

Jane Allen graduated in Biochemistry from University College Cardiff with 1st class honours. She moved to Cambridge to do a PhD in Virology supervised by Tony Minson working on Herpes simplex and produced a superb thesis and several publications. She joined the research group of Andrew Lever as Postdoctoral fellow to study HIV and when the new Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellowships were announced, applied for and gained one of the first of these prestigious awards. She went on to be awarded a Wellcome Trust career development fellowship whilst in Cambridge and was appointed to NIBSC as Principal Scientist in the Division of Retrovirology less than 2 years ago. While she was in Cambridge she designed and performed the definitive experiments which showed cotranslational genomic RNA packaging in HIV-2, the first time this had been discovered in retroviruses. She went on to prove the hypothesis, based on her own observation, of non-reciprocal packaging between HIV-1 and HIV-2, again a first. These were landmarks in the study of HIV RNA packaging and it was Jane's superb laboratory skills and her ability to produce such unarguable results that carried this work into the literature. Her work was received with acclaim at the retrovirus meetings in Cold Spring Harbor. Her later period in Cambridge led her into the exploding area of cell proteins which interact with viruses and which the viruses use and again she was at the cutting edge. She was one of the first to identify TSG101 as an important cell protein used by HIV, involved in budding.

Jane leaves a remarkable scientific legacy and not only in the excellent published papers. The standards of work she set for herself and the quality of her results were an example to all who worked with her. Students, technicians, research assistants and senior scientists all came to respect her perfectionism and her striving for scientific truth. She was truly a gifted scientific investigator.

Jane was not just a highly talented researcher, she was a great person to know in and out of the lab and someone who inspired just as much affection as she did respect through her warmth, humour and generosity. She will be profoundly missed as much as a friend as a colleague by very many people present and past in Cambridge and at NIBSC as well as in the retroviral research community worldwide.

Jane remarried in 2001 and her second child, a son, Luka, was born earlier this year. Deepest sympathies go to Edwin her husband, Emma and Luka and all the rest of her family.

David Kelly (17 May 1944-18 July 2003)

David Kelly's tragic death at the age of 59 has illustrated all too readily the problems that arise when a scientist, seeking to retain professional integrity, becomes caught up in establishment power politics.

David was born in Wales and took his first degree at Leeds. He decided to specialize in virology and completed the MSc course organized by Peter Wildy at Birmingham before moving to the NERC Unit of Invertebrate Virology at Oxford to undertake postgraduate research with Tom Tinsley on insect iridescent viruses.

After graduating with a DPhil in 1971 he did a post-doctoral project with Nigel Dimmock at Warwick on influenza virus before returning to the Oxford Unit as a staff member in 1974 to continue his interests in insect viruses. The next few years were very productive and he published a series of important papers on the molecular properties of a number of members of the Iridoviridae and the baculoviruses.

In 1984 he was attracted to the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down, eventually becoming the Head of Microbiology. One of his first major tasks was to oversee the decontamination of Gruinard Island, the site of wartime experiments on anthrax. During this time he also utilized the category 4 containment facilities to carry out valuable research on the molecular and antigenic properties of simian herpes B virus (which is endemic in monkeys and almost always fatal in humans).

His first venture onto the international scene occurred in October 1989 when he was called on to help in the debriefing of Vladamir Pasechnik, a Soviet defector. This revealed the massive extent of the Soviet bioweapons (B/W) programme and, as a consequence, in 1991 he co-led a UK/US delegation to inspect Soviet biowarfare institutes. It was during this visit that, largely through David's probing and virological expertise, it became evident that there was an ongoing programme of smallpox research and development at Novosibirsk in Siberia - contrary to the international agreement on the cessation of all work on smallpox.

His expertise in the detection of bioweapons was, by now, internationally established and this was recognized by the UK government with the award of the CMG. He played a leading role in the UNSCOM team which uncovered the five bioweapons facilities in Iraq in 1994 and he supervised their dismantling. In all, he made over 36 visits to Iraq and was preparing for another visit a few days before his death. His colleagues in the UNSCOM team described David as 'quiet, persistent, well-informed and scientifically indomitable'. It was typical of David that, in spite of his travails there, he came to love Iraq and admired the Iraquis (see Plague Wars by Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg).

There is no doubt that the UK has lost a formidable scientist - one of the very few microbiologists who had real expertise in bioweapons. His professional colleagues will miss his courtesy, his quiet humour, his ability to make friends easily and his wide knowledge of the more practical aspects of virology. Among his many enthusiasms was a passion for Welsh rugby, a keen support for Leeds United and an ability to play the saxophone with some verve. We grieve with his wife, Jan and daughters Sian, Ellen and Rachel on the sudden and tragic loss of an exceptional husband and father.

Willie Russell, University of St. Andrews, UK

Sir Robert Williams (30 June 1916-24 May 2003)

Robert Williams Sir Robert (R.E.O.) Williams was one of the outstanding figures in medical microbiology, public health and medical education of the last half century. He combined scientific work of the highest calibre with outstanding administrative achievements and won respect and admiration for both.

Born in London in 1916 into a medical family (his father, Gwyn, was a consultant surgeon and, for a period, Dean at University College Hospital, London), he did his medical studies and a degree in physiology at University College and University College Hospital, London, qualifying in 1940. After a house physician post at the same hospital, he joined the emergency medical service as a pathologist, in fact a microbiologist, and worked with the Medical Research Council's Infection Unit at the Birmingham Accident Hospital under Professor (later Sir) Ashley Miles, an inspirational influence on a young microbiologist. It was in Birmingham that Williams began his ground-breaking studies on the sources and spread of wound infections and hospital cross-infection, work that is as relevant today as it was in the 1940s and 50s. He concentrated initially on infections of wounds of the hands, which were common in the light engineering factories in Birmingham.

A second major influence on Williams, G.S. (later Sir Graham) Wilson, the visionary founder and first Director of the Public Health Laboratory Service, had recently devised a method for differentiating strains of Staphylococcus aureus, the commonest wound-infecting bacterium, based upon their susceptibilities to bacteriophages. Williams defined and elaborated this 'phage typing scheme and applied it to the study of sources and routes of transmission of this major wound pathogen. He published the 'phage typing method in 1952 and, using this technique, he showed how wounds could be 'self-colonized' by S. aureus from the patient's own nose or skin. He also showed that infections with group A streptococci usually originated outside the patient. He was one of the first to recognize the practical importance of high-resolution typing to identify the sources and links between different cases of infection, in his case wound infections. This remains a major function of the reference laboratories that became such an important part of his life. Our understanding of the worldwide epidemics of staphylococcal wound infection of the 1950s and 1960s was almost entirely due to the strain discrimination provided by 'phage typing.

In 1946, Williams had moved to the Central Public Health Laboratory at Colindale, North London, to the Streptococcal, Staphylococcal and Air Hygiene laboratory and he became Director of that laboratory in 1949. His work on wound contamination covered the varied contributions of direct contact, large falling droplets and air-suspended droplets, and showed many of the environmental factors that affected these routes of transmission in different hospital settings.

By now recognized as an international authority, he provided simple guidance on how to prevent wound infections and how to treat them and, in 1960, he was one of the authors of the first classical book on hospital-acquired infections, which remains as highly relevant for today's infection control teams as it was then to those of us who would follow in his footsteps.

In 1960 he was lured back into clinical academic medicine as Professor of Microbiology at St Mary's Hospital Medical School. He was the first full-time academic Dean of St Mary's from 1967 to 1973, bringing the innovative approach of his bacteriological research to the running of a medical school. He was also a member of the Medical Research Council from 1969 to 1973. 1973 marked the last major phase of his professional life when he returned to the PHLS at Colindale as Director of the Service, with its central reference laboratories and network of regional and area laboratories, based in hospitals where they combined diagnostic and epidemiological work. During the same period, he was elected President of the Royal College of Pathologists (1975-78) and in a pioneering move for a medical Royal College, he guided the extension of membership to include medical scientists who were not medically qualified. He was knighted in 1976.

Under his direction, the PHLS enlarged its responsibilities with the establishment of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in 1977 and then the addition of the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, Porton Down, in 1979. Before he retired in 1981, he was closely involved in planning and designing the new institute at Colindale to house both CPHL and CDSC. This was his physical legacy to microbiology and public health services, but his real legacy to medicine and science has formed the basis of many of the developments of the last 20 years. He was one of the classical tradition of doctors who were also important medical scientists. Throughout, he remained an unassuming and approachable man with a good sense of humour. He was always available and his advice was generously given and always supportive.

In 1944, he married Margaret Lumsden; she died in 1990. They are survived by a son and two daughters, one of whom followed her father into microbiology and works for the World Health Organization.

Brian I. Duerden, Professor of Medical Microbiology, University of Wales College of Medicine; lately, Director, Public Health Laboratory Service

Last updated 10 August 2009

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