Obituary - Prof Bill Mulligan, academic

Professor Bill Mulligan, former Dean of the Veterinary School and Vice-Principal of the University of Glasgow has died aged 95.

Bill was born in Partick, Glasgow. He received most of his education in Northern Ireland and graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast B.Sc. (First Class Honours) in Chemistry in 1943. He joined the department of chemistry as an assistant that year. The staff of the department had been seriously depleted by the loss of a number of senior members to the armed forces and to other war work. This put a heavy teaching load on a group of assistants in the department. In spite of the load Bill managed to play a full part in a range of university activities. He was president of the Chemical Society; the literary and Scientific Society (the university debating society) and represented Queen’s in a number of inter university debates

Laboratory work for an MSc was carried out in the evenings, at weekends and occasionally overnight during fire watching. After leaving Queen’s in 1945 he took up an appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in St Bartholomew’s Medical School. As well as teaching conventional classes for medical students, he collaborated with Arthur Wormall and G E Francis in developing and presenting a course on the use of isotopes in biochemical and physiological investigations. In 1950, he obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of London for his work in this field. He also met his future wife Norah in London.

Bill’s move to Glasgow University Veterinary School in 1951 as senior lecturer and head of the small department of Veterinary Biochemistry brought about an important change in direction from purely academic studies in immunochemistry to a practical approach to farm animal disease problems to someone from farming background this had a special appeal. The department was further strengthened by the appointment, as lecturer, of Frank Jennings a graduate in Agricultural Chemistry also from Queen’s University Belfast.

At that time the pre-clinical part of the school was housed in the old building in Buccleuch Street, described by an important visitor as the ‘Worst academic slum in Europe’. In spite of the decrepit state of the building it had an important asset in the close proximity of the biochemists to the parasitology section of the pathology department. George Urquhart and the parasitologists had a keen interest in the possibilities of immunization against infections caused by parasitic worms and within weeks of their meeting he and Bill had embarked on a series of attempts to immunise rabbits against infections with liver fluke. It was a collaboration that was to endure through most of their academic careers. The attempted vaccines based on adjuvant chemical fractions of adult fluke were largely unsuccessful. However soon after irradiated larvae were used to develop vaccines against various nematode worms and in the case of the lungworm of cattle this was spectacularly successful and led to the development of the first vaccine against a parasitic disease of cattle. ‘Dictol’ was marketed for over 50 years. Bill and his colleagues also developed tracer techniques to understand how parasites cause disease in their hosts. For his contribution to this work Bill was awarded the honorary degree of Dr.vet.med by Copenhagen University. Bill was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1966.

Glasgow’s success with the use of nuclear technology attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, or specifically the Join IAEA/FAO Division involved in Animal Production and Health. The Division set up a series of meetings/workshops under the title ‘The use of radiation and radioisotopes in parasitology These extended over several years and attracted a broad range of international participants.

During the times spent in Vienna he developed a close working relationship with staff in the IAEA and was called upon as an expert. He travelled widely in Africa and the Middle East to visit projects and people supported by the Agency.

Bill developed a close working relationship with John Lenihan of the Physics Department of the Western Regional Hospital Board in Glasgow. They set up a very successful joint training course for staff proposing to use radioactive substances. Due to the absence of anything similar in Scotland the course was very much in demand for a number of years and was eventually superseded by more in-house training and International training courses.

The links between Glasgow and the Joint Division were further strengthened by a number of Glasgow colleagues who served as experts for short or prolonged periods and by many of overseas students coming to Glasgow with IAEA. The Glasgow Veterinary School became a centre of excellence in the application of nuclear methods in research on farm animal science.

In 1977 Bill was appointed Dean of the Glasgow Veterinary School and three years later became University Vice Principal (Science). This coincided with a period of financial stringency for the university mostly resulting from a dramatic fall in the number of overseas students which in turn was the consequence of the government’s edict that overseas students should pay the full economic cost of their tuition. Bill was given the task, by central administration, of mounting a campaign of recruitment. With the help of Lawrence Reynolds as administrator the Overseas Desk was established. As a result of these efforts the decline in the number of overseas students was reversed and it’s interesting that at present overseas students represent an essential element in the finances of most UK universities.

Also linked to University finances was the Early Retirement Scheme. This was introduced to avoid compulsory redundancies. Bill was given the task of interviewing all those in Science-based departments who were interested, explaining the details of the scheme and answering their questions. A key question was ‘If you think this is an acceptable scheme are you opting for it yourself? Bill could reply honestly ‘Yes’. After three years as Dean of the Veterinary Faculty and a further three as Vice Principal Bill wanted one more chance to get back to the bench to see if he could still do something useful. This he was able to do thanks to the receipt of a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship which went a long way to covering the research expenses.

With Ian Maclean of the department a programme was launched to study the energy metabolism of pigeons under racing conditions. These underlined as in migrating birds, the role of fat as an energy source. This followed from his keen interest in racing pigeons.

Shortly after arriving in Glasgow in 1951 Bill became seduced by the game of golf. He played regularly in the university staff competitions with some success especially when partnered by Frank Jennings. For many years Bill also functioned as Glasgow Secretary for the annual match between The Senates of Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities. In 1989, he was granted life membership of Cardross Golf Club. Something of a Francophile, he enjoyed happy family holidays at their cottage in Brittany. He is survived by his wife Norah, son John, daughter Clare, five grandchildren and four great grandchildren. His daughter Rosalind predeceased him.

Ian Maclean