Anthony Peck (1933–2021)

British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, vol. 88, pp. 362–363

Abstract

Tony Peck was an unwitting pioneer in the specialty of Clinical Pharmacology.His course through life to get there was a mixture of serendipity brought about by trying to adapt to routine work in the NHS and inevitability, because he was a brilliant scholar.He went to school in Horncastle in Lincolnshire.He was immensely proud of his roots in that county as he would enquire of most who met him whether they were also privileged to hail from God's own county.To them, he would be especially warm.In 1952, he was the first member of his family to go to university.He went from school to Middlesex Hospital Medical School which at that time had very fine professors of Physiology and of Pharmacology and members of the Academic Medical Unit with strong records in what would now be called Clinical Physiology Research.He clearly flourished there and took, in passing a BSc in physiology in 1955 and MB.BS in 1958 when he was awarded the University Gold Medal.After that, the pull of research led him to a PhD in 1967 under the exacting guidance of Professor Franz Hobbiger in Acetylcholine esterases.As was common for doctors considering an academic life, he moved with his family of four children in 1968 to work further in his chosen field with Professor Bob Featherstone at UCSF.Restless, he returned to the United Kingdom to seek a future in academic medicine.Anyone with intellectual honesty could see that the future looked bleak then.Laboratory facilities were meagre and problems to be solved were insubstantial.He was

Authors 1

1. A. S. E. Fowle

   Wellcome Trust

   Affiliation as printed

   Clinical Pharmacology Wellcome Research Laboratories Beckenham UK

   Clinical Pharmacology Wellcome Research Laboratories, Beckenham, UK