Obituaries

The former Chair of Biochemistry and Dean of King’s Faculty of Basic & Medical Sciences, Professor Henry Arnstein, died in November 2020, aged 96.

Henry was one of the world’s eminent biological scientists and a father of molecular biology. He explored the basic biology of the cell, which led to the revolution that is our modern-day molecular genomic science.

In the 1960s, his interest in amino acids and proteins coincided with the deciphering of the genetic code and the emergence of molecular biology. That, together with his collaboration with Bob Cox, who was studying ribonucleic acids, led to a new direction in his research that lasted a lifetime – protein biosynthesis.

After working and studying at universities and research institutes worldwide, Henry took up the Chair of Biochemistry position at King’s in 1965. In his early years at King’s, his research focused on the mechanism of initiation of protein synthesis and the production of active ribosomal subunits and messenger ribonucleoprotein complexes from mammalian sources. Later, in the 1970s and into the 1980s, he continued his investigation of the control of protein synthesis by various stress factors – for example, heat shock.

As well as running the department, he was a member of College Council and Dean, for some years, of the Faculty of Basic & Medical Sciences. He became a Fellow of King’s in 1979. He supervised and mentored many PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, and published over 150 scientific papers. His lab was always a hive of activity and attracted scientists from across the world.

Read the King’s obituary in full

It is with great sadness that we report the sudden loss of Patricia Barlow, an active member of the King’s College London Alumni Association (KCLA).

After graduating, Pat worked in the public and private sectors, eventually becoming one of the UK’s leading experts in procurement, retiring from her most recent position at the British Telecom Group in 2015.

Pat has been an active supporter of King’s for more than two decades via KCLA, where she held various offices, including that of Secretary and Cultural Officer. Always professional, supportive and insightful, Pat was greatly respected by those who had the privilege of serving on KCLA Council with her. She will be greatly missed by her friends and colleagues at the university.

Pat’s long-term partner, David Medhurst, intends to hold a memorial service early in 2022 following the resolution of the COVID-19 situation. Details to follow.

(Thanks to Alison Taylor for providing this obituary.)

Colin Bushnell, former Head of the Department of Mathematics, Head of the School of Physical Sciences and Engineering and Assistant Principal, passed away in January 2021.

Colin studied Mathematics at King’s, where he received his PhD in 1972 under Professor Albrecht Fröhlich. He started lecturing at King’s in 1975, progressing to full professorship in 1990.

His work as a mathematician was highly influential and internationally recognised. He specialised in representation theory and led, in collaboration with others, acclaimed research into the representation theory of reductive p-adic groups. This enabled major breakthroughs in the study of the local Langlands correspondence. He was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994 and received the Senior Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 1995. He was a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and held visiting appointments at institutions in the USA and France. He remained passionate about research after retirement and was most recently published in 2017.

Colin was also Assistant Principal of King’s from 2004 until his retirement, during which time he oversaw a major redevelopment of the historic Strand Campus. In recognition of this tremendous service, Colin was elected a Fellow of King’s College London in 2002.

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Dr Jack Cohen, alumnus and long-standing donor to King’s Dental School, has passed away.

Jack was behind one of the Dental School’s most esteemed awards, The H Arthur and J Bernard Cohen Prize for Excellence in Clinical Dentistry. The prize was established in memory of Jack’s dentist father, who had been a great inspiration to him. It celebrates excellence in the field of dental anaesthesia and sedation – skills Jack believed to benefit both King’s students and patients more broadly.

Talking about his giving back in 2012, Jack said ‘As an alumnus, the satisfaction of being able to support the Dental Institute that provided me with the skills to practise such an engaging profession, is an opportunity not to be missed. To be able to encourage those that are to follow is an honour and a pleasure.

Muriel Louise Farmborough has died, aged 90.

Muriel grew up in Cricklewood, London, and attended Henrietta Barnett School, where she formed friendships that would last a lifetime. She studied Law at King’s and was presented to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, at her graduation ceremony in Westminster Abbey in 1957.

Muriel had a long and successful career in probate law. Initially based at the Principal Probate Registry at Somerset House, she then moved up to the position of Principal Clerk. In 1965, she took up a new appointment at the Oxford District Probate Registry, where she remained in a senior role until her retirement in October 1989. She enjoyed being part of the Civil Service Club, attending reunion events for many years afterwards. Travel was always an enduring love. During the 1950s and 1960s, Muriel was an active member of the Holiday Fellowship, where she formed friendships and had adventures, often in the company of her old school friends. After retirement, she travelled the world again.

Muriel moved to Oxfordshire in 1969, where she embraced local life and was an active member of local clubs and societies, including the local Photographic Club.

Muriel’s connection with King’s remained important to her all her life. She derived great pleasure from attending reunion dinners and staying in touch with her fellow students.

Muriel has touched many lives, she was well loved, and she will be missed.

(This obituary was first published in the Henley Standard on 2 November 2020.)

Professor Brian George Gardiner, Biology and Palaeontology lecturer and researcher at King’s, passed away on 21 January 2021.

Brian grew up in Gloucestershire and won a scholarship to read Entomology at Imperial College London in 1951. He had a long and distinguished scientific career. He did his PhD at University College London and, in 1958, went to Queen Elizabeth College (QEC) to take up a junior lecturer position. He did a sabbatical at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from 1963 to 1964. He was awarded his DSc in August 1975 and a readership at QEC from 1978. He was made a Professor in 1985. Brian was the President of the Linnean Society of London from 1994 to 1997.

Brian studied the evolutionary interrelationships of fish and four-limbed land animals or tetrapods. He was one of the first to apply the methodology of cladistics (a way of classifying organisms based on shared traits) to this area. Together with a group of biologists known as the ‘Gang of Four’, he published a revolutionary study that was the first to suggest that lungfishes are in fact a sister group of tetrapods. Their paper, published in 1981, provoked a strong reaction from the ‘Swedish School’, including fish palaeontologist Erik Jarvik, and stimulated much debate amongst vertebrate palaeontologists. This helped establish cladistics as the best way to investigate the anatomical features that are most significant in the evolution of vertebrates.

Brian supervised many PhD students. Gavin Young at QEC described him as ‘one of the most sincere, straightforward, and honest people I’ve ever met. He was always exuberant, humorous and fun-loving, and enthusiastic in discussing any idea, even if it came from a knowledge-challenged PhD student. He was an inspirational PhD supervisor’.

Martha Richter (Biology, 1991) has very fond memories of Brian, whom she met in 1987 when she studied at King’s on a scholarship from the Brazilian Research Council. She arrived from South America with 200kg of late carboniferous fossil fishes she had collected in southern Brazil. As an influential fish palaeontologist and expert on Palaeozoic ray-finned fish, Brian was the ideal scholar to advise on her project.

Brian was much liked and respected by his students. Many recall his vertebrate biology classes, which included a guided tour to the Natural History Museum’s roof to see the amazing views from the top and take a close look at the elaborate gargoyles.

Brian’s sense of humour and outgoing, friendly character made a big impression on everyone who knew him. Philippe Janvier, a researcher at the Natural History Museum, Paris, said he thought Brian would be immortal. In many ways he is, through the many publications and funny anecdotes he shared.

A victim of the coronavirus pandemic, Brian leaves his widow Elizabeth and three children, twin daughters Catherine and Clare and Nicholas. He will be much missed.

(Thank you to Martha Richter for providing this obituary.)

World-leading HIV scientist and King’s research collaborator James Hakim has died.

James was Professor of Medicine at the University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences, where he also led the Clinical Research Centre and Clinical Trials Unit. He was Adjunct Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado, Denver, USA. James dedicated his life to medical research and education – in particular, the research of HIV. A brilliant clinical scientist and researcher, he was also a supportive teacher and mentor. He is credited with transforming medical education in Zimbabwe, training a new generation of collaborative African research scientists. He served as an elected African representative on the International AIDS Society’s Governing Council from 2016 to 2020. He played a leading role in HIV research, including anti-retroviral therapy trials, and authored more than 150 publications. James was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. His commitment to and leadership of health as a right, to scientific excellence and to education was recognised in 2019, when he received the Ward Cates Spirit Award from the HIV Prevention Trials Network.

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Professor Leslie Iversen CBE, the renowned neuroscientist, passed away in July 2020.

Leslie was Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases at King’s from 1999 to 2004.

Leslie gained both his BA in Biochemistry and his PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge. His career focused on the research of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, and understanding the action of drugs designed for the central nervous system. From 1971 to 1982, he was Director of the Medical Research Council’s Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit in Cambridge. His ground-breaking research studied the functions of neuropeptides in sensory processes such as pain, the action of anti-psychotic drugs and the neural basis of schizophrenia, and the neurochemical basis of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease. The unit established one of the first brain banks to collect post-mortem tissue from people who had died with neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Iversen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980 and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Between 1982 and 1995, Leslie worked as Director of the Merck, Sharp & Dohme Neuroscience Research Centre. In 1995, he became Visiting Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. In 1995, he also became a Visiting Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. Additionally, he was Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at the Home Office. He was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, and in 2013 he was awarded a CBE.

For a longer look over Leslie’s impressive life and career, please see his obituary in the Guardian.

Dr Alan Lidiard was a theoretical physicist known internationally for his work on solid state physics (particularly defects in ionic solids).

Having attained his degree and master’s at King’s, he was awarded a doctorate in 1952 and then continued his research in the United States as a Fulbright scholar. He later lectured in the UK and abroad, and is best known for his work at the UK Atomic Energy Authority laboratory, where he led the Theoretical Physics Division.

He was awarded the Guthrie Medal by the Institute of Physics in 1988, was the author of some 140 scientific publications, and was a co-author (with A R Allnatt) of a major work: Atomic Transport in Solids (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

After retiring, he remained active in research as a Visiting Professor at both the universities of Reading and Oxford. He is survived by his two daughters.

(Thank you to Dr Henrie Lidiard for providing this obituary.)

Professor Cyril Mango, a leading figure in the study of the Byzantine Empire, has died, aged 92. He was the Koraes Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s during the 1960s.

Cyril was widely respected as a scholar, with a formidable breadth of expertise much admired by historians, art historians and archaeologists. But his work also reached beyond the world of academia. His books on subjects such as Byzantine architecture proved popular with a wider audience. He was known for a refreshing approach to the past – for him, Byzantium was a history and culture that deserved to be studied in its own right.

Cyril was born in Istanbul to a cosmopolitan family. Growing up in the city, he was fascinated by its Byzantine past. He first left Turkey in 1946 to study Classics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His studies then took him to Paris, where he studied for his master’s, and then, in 1951, he won a junior fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. – a leading centre for Byzantine research. He remained there in various roles until 1963.

In 1963, he accepted the Koraes Professorship of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s, returning to Dumbarton Oaks as Professor of Byzantine Archaeology five years later. In 1973, he took up the Bywater and Sotheby Professorship of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at Oxford, a post he held until his retirement in 1995.

Peter served in the RAF as a pathologist before joining a general practice in Basildon as an assistant.

He set up a postgraduate medical society at Basildon Hospital, with monthly joint meetings between GPs and consultants. As one of the first trainers, he set up the local scheme: first as course organiser, then as Associate Regional Adviser for North East Thames.

As Essex Royal College of General Practitioners President, then Provost, he ran some of the first courses for receptionists, managers and nurses, as well as for doctors. He wrote for medical journals and co-authored books, the best-known being Emergencies in General Practice.

Within practice, he improved standards by developing protocols, audits and formularies (lists of standard prescribable medicines).

The practice moved into the first health centre in Essex, leading the development of extended role nurses, nurse practitioners and computerisation.

Peter served his patients with dedication, integrity and compassion.

(Thank you to Dr Martin’s son, Peter, for providing this obituary.)

Gordon McVie, Visiting Professor at the Comprehensive Cancer Centre, passed away in January 2021, aged 76.

Gordon’s career was devoted to translating scientific knowledge into clinical improvements in cancer care, and he did much to promote the international standing of Guy’s Cancer Centre. Gordon was also President at the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer and held a Clinical Research Directorship post at the National Cancer Institute of the Netherlands. Colleagues say that his tireless efforts in his role as Senior Clinical Research Consultant led to an ongoing and fruitful collaboration with the Italian Institute for Molecular Oncology.

Read the King’s obituary in full

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks FKC, alumnus and Emeritus Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible, passed away on 7 November 2020.

Rabbi Sacks was a distinguished academic and an active member of King’s community. His contributions were many, and his influence reached beyond geographical boundaries. Central to his message was appreciation and respect of all faiths, with an emphasis on recognising the values of each other in order to combat the global rise of violence and terrorism effectively.

Rabbi Sacks was awarded a PhD from King’s in 1981. As a Visiting Professor, he contributed to teaching on the Associate of King’s College programme. He also took part in the Trialogue entitled ‘Faith in Public Life’ in March 2004 with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as part of the university’s 175th anniversary celebrations. He served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. Following his retirement as Chief Rabbi, he was appointed Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King’s, and he contributed to modules in Theology, Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies and Abrahamic Religions. A prolific writer and commentator, he contributed to radio and TV programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

Rabbi Sacks received many awards and honours. He was widely recognised for his work bringing spiritual insight to the public through the media, his popular lectures and more than two dozen books. He was knighted in 2005 and made a Life Peer, taking his seat in the House of Lords in October 2009.

Read the King’s obituary in full

Professor Roy Wisbey, Head of the Department of German at King’s from 1971 to 1994, has died, aged 91.

Roy came to King’s from the University of Cambridge, where he was a lecturer in Medieval German. He pioneered the use of computing for literary and linguistic research and encouraged the establishment of digital humanities at King’s. Roy was Dean of King’s Faculty of Arts and Honorary Director of the Institute of Germanic Studies. His many roles included co-founding the national German Students’ Drama Week and the King’s Language and Communications Centre, and he was inaugurator of the National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies. He co-founded and was first Director of King’s Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies. In 2003, Roy served as President of the Modern Humanities Research Association, and as Honorary Treasurer for over three decades.

The department flourished as a centre of German teaching and research excellence under Roy’s stewardship, and he contributed to its research success with his own publications on German literature. He also encouraged collaboration with other language departments and played a leading role in the introduction of European Studies in 1992. Roy’s leadership was marked by enthusiasm and humanity. His services to German studies were recognised by the award of the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987 and the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in 1988.

Read the King’s obituary in full

Professor Lewis Wolpert, the influential developmental biologist and prolific science communicator, died on 28 January 2021 at the age of 91.

Lewis studied and lectured in Zoology at King’s and was known for his findings on how cells in the developing embryo coordinate so that each plays the role needed in order for the organism to take shape. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1929, Lewis studied Civil Engineering as an undergraduate at the University of the Witwatersrand, and later went on to graduate school in Soil Mechanics at Imperial College London. ‘A friend told me that soil mechanics wasn’t very sexy and that some of my work could be relevant to the study of cell mechanics,’ he recalled in an interview with The Scientist in 2011. So, Lewis switched to studying the mechanics of cell division at King’s College London and later was promoted to a lectureship and readership there. He eventually moved to University College London and remained there until his retirement at age 74.

The Guardian reports that Lewis worked with sea urchin embryos and Hydra, but eventually settled on chick embryos, which he used to study limb development. He avoided hands-on laboratory work, instead designing experiments that were carried out by his technician, Amata Hornbruch. Some of his most well-known work involved developing a model for how cells in a developing embryo ‘know’ how they are situated in relationship to other parts of the organism.

Lewis would often tell audiences that gastrulation, the stage about two weeks into human embryonic development when organised layers begin to form, is ‘truly the most important time in your life’. According to BioNews, this idea was influential, forming the basis for a UK policy that human embryos can’t be studied in vitro past the 14th day of development.

Lewis is survived by his wife, Alison Hawkes, and his four children, two stepchildren, and six grandchildren.

With thanks to The Scientist for permission to publish this obituary:

S. Williams, ‘High Profile Developmental Biologist Lewis Wolpert Dies at 91’, The Scientist, 16 February 2021.

Photo credit: Neil Vargesson (Anatomy & Human Biology, 1994)