Page 34 - Eclipse - Autumn 2015

RVC Honours 2015
Colin Whitaker – Honorary Degree
The following is an excerpt of the oration given for Colin by Professor Stephen May:
Colin was born and grew up in Kent, moving onto the RVC from where he graduated in 1965. After qualifying as a veterinary surgeon, Colin went back to Kent and joined a mixed practice in Ashford focusing mainly on dairy and beef cattle until he retired as senior partner.
In April 1985 Colin noticed
a cow showing unusual neurological symptoms that turned out to be the rst case of a disease that caused a major health scare in the UK, having
a major impact of beef sales and exports. He took particular care to record his experience of an increasing number of such cases over a relatively short time, and sought expert advice with post mortem and other investigations. Colin persisted in his conviction that he was observing a new disease, and further work in the eld led to him submitting samples to his
local Veterinary Laboratories Agency.
This condition not only affected cattle but was also transmitted to people as a result of consumption of beef. Eventually he had collected suf cient evidence to be able to describe the new disease affecting
cows - bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Within 10 years, 180,000 cases of BSE were to be con rmed in the UK, however it is estimated that over 4 million cows in total were infected with BSE.
In consequence of his key knowledge of the origins of BSE, Colin was invited to present
his experiences of some of the earliest cases to a British Cattle Veterinary Association meeting in 1987. He was subsequently elected to the Council and served as president of the
BCVA from 1995 to 96 and
was recognised by the RCVS
in 2013 for his crucial role in
the development of veterinary science through the award of an
Honorary Fellowship. Colin is deserving of his place in veterinary history for his contribution to the public good through his work on BSE. These personal and professional achievements come from a dedicated and not so ordinary man who spent a lifetime practising in the trenches.
McNeill Alexander – Honorary Degree
The following is an excerpt of the oration given for McNeill by Professor Alan Wilson:
Professor Alexander’s in uence in the eld of animal locomotion has been profound. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, with a CBE award among many other accolades, he has been a leading gure in biomechanics since the 1960s. Neill completed his PhD at Cambridge followed
by a DSc at the University of Wales, and was a Lecturer
in Zoology at Bangor University before settling at the University of Leeds in 1969, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. He maintains a visiting professorship there. Neill has been Secretary of the Zoological Society of London and President of both the Society for Experimental Biology and the International Society of Vertebrate Morphologists.
Neill’s work is extremely highly cited - he is arguably the most in uential and respected biomechanicist. He has written more than 250 scienti c papers and numerous in uential books. His expertise covers such diverse areas as how sh swim, how dinosaurs ran, how elastic mechanisms make animal movement more ef cient and how to model the form and function of animals.
Neill has codi ed fundamental principles that help us understand how much in common many species have
due to inescapable biomechanical constraints, such as gravity, and how these principles can inspire robotic design or improvements in human and animal healthcare, such as prosthetics. He has also been a passionate science communicator, advising numerous television documentaries. His CD-ROM How Animals Move received two EMMA awards in 1995.
He has also in uenced the careers of many of the current and past members of the RVC’s Structure and Motion Laboratory in diverse ways - through reading his books and papers or using them as teaching materials, or by acting as a PhD external examiner, sitting on grant review panels or acting as a wise mentor and sounding board for scienti c ideas over the decades.
He is indeed a worthy recipient of an RVC Honorary Degree.