Richard Isaac 1918-2013

Richard Iorwerth Isaac of Aberystwyth passed away peacefully on the morning of the 3rd of January, 2013, at Bronglais Hospital after a short illness.

Richard was born in 1918 and, apart from war service, spent his entire life in Aberystwyth as a student and from 1945 as an employee of the UCW Aberystwyth. He was educated at Ardwyn Grammar School, obtaining a County Exhibition in 1937 to study Zoology at UCW Aberystwyth. He graduated with a BSc in 1940 and then undertook military training with the Welsh Guards at the Caterham Barracks Guard Depot in Surrey.

His zoology training was put to good use during WWII when he joined the No. 7 Malaria Field Laboratory of the Royal Army Medical Corps stationed in Nigeria. This unit included Peter Mattingly who would become a world authority on mosquito systematics and genetics at the Natural History Museum, London. The unit was responsible for safeguarding soldiers and airmen from malaria at RAF staging posts and training camps for soldiers destined for the Far East theatre of war. He later joined a pathology unit at a Military Hospital in Nigeria before returning to the UK in July, 1944.

After war service, Richard was employed as a research technician in the Animal Health Research Unit at UCW Aberystwyth, first at the Dairy Buildings, Llanbadarn Road and subsequently at Peithyll Farm, Capel Dewi. Under the direction of Dr Keith B Sinclair, he worked on fluke infections of sheep and made valuable contributions to a series of scientific papers published in the British Veterinary Journal and in Research in Veterinary Science on the pathogenicity and acquired resistance to Fasciola hepatica. He retired from his post as chief technician in October, 1981.