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| David J Weatherall |
| Emeritus Regius Professor, University of Oxford, UK |
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David Weatherall qualified at Liverpool University in 1956 and after several junior hospital posts, and a period of National Service in Malaya, spent four years at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.
He returned to Liverpool in 1965, where he was appointed Professor of Haematology in 1971.
In 1974 he moved to Oxford, where he was Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine until 1992.
In 1992 he was appointed Regius professor of Medicine at Oxford. In 1979 he became Honorary Director of the MRC Molecular Haematology Unit, and in 1989 he established the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford, of which he was Honorary Director (later renamed Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine).
His main research interests have been in the application of molecular biology to clinical medicine, particularly the genetic disorders of haemoglobin. He was knighted in 1987, elected FRS in 1977 and a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA in 1990. In 1992 he was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He became Emeritus Regius Professor in September 2000 upon his retirement.
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Why did you go into hematology?
Because of a profound interest in genetics and the belief that genetic blood disorders might be easier to study than many other genetic diseases.
How?- Purely by chance. While looking after the children's ward in Singapore during my National Service I studied a Ghurka child with a profound anemia which had baffled all the army doctors for many years.
It turned out that she had b thalassemia, but in telling the world about this in my first paper in the British Medical Journal I was almost court-marshalled for publishing information about the military without permission.
During the later part of my military service in Malaya I screened populations for hemoglobin variants using a home-made piece of equipment powered from a car battery. By then I knew what I wanted to do in the future (but not with home-made equipment).
Who or what has most inspired you in your work?
Two teachers in Liverpool, the physiologist Rod Gregory whose brilliant lectures were clearly from a man who was creating science as well as teaching it, and Cyril Clarke who convinced me that genetics must be an important aspect of disease processes.
Which scientific papers have made a great impression on you?
Those of my great hero Archibald Garrod, who showed how questions about unusual findings at the bedside could be taken into the laboratory and, later, the theoretical paper of Vernon Ingram and Tony Stretton on the potential genetic basis of the thalassemias.
What is the most important lesson you've learnt in your professional life?
The most important lesson I learnt, but never was able to put into practice, was how to say 'no'.
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
No really great achievement but simply putting a few pieces together in a jigsaw relating what I saw at the bedside to sick molecules, and at least making some in-road into the reasons for the diversity of genetic disease.
What are the best and worst aspects of your job?
Best aspects: talking to patients or young people about their research activities; worst aspects: dealing with the growing bureaucracy of an ancient university or a creaking health service on endless committees.
When or where are you happiest?
An ideal day would be to spend the morning with my research group, the afternoon watching Liverpool beat Manchester United, followed by a good Chinese meal and to bed with Mozart.
What do you do to relax?
Listening to music or playing (extremely badly) my long-suffering spinnet.
What book are you reading at the moment?
Roger Scruton's The West and The Rest, a remarkable inciteful study of the fundamental differences between the Islamic world and the West, and Graham Swift's The Light of Day.
What's your most evocative piece of music?
The last movement of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony; a remarkable contrapuntal celebration of a short and glorious life.
What's your favorite film?
The Maltese Falcon (even better at the 20th viewing).
What are your hobbies?
Music, oriental food, modern literature, and following the fate of Liverpool Football Club.
What car do you drive?
I cannot remember, but it is one with a tall enough roof so I do not get my hair trapped in an unopenable electric sunshine roof on the motorway for the second time.
What are your unfulfilled ambitions?
To write a novel based on the lives of the bizarre characters I have met in Oxford (unfulfilled for legal reasons) and to persuade the international public health community that children in the developing countries with inherited blood diseases are worthy of their attention (currently, more likely to be achieved than a lurid novel).
How would you like to be remembered?
As somebody who managed to persuade a few young people that it was not impossible to be both a decent doctor and a competent research worker at the same time.
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