We are greatly saddened by the recent death of Professor Malcolm Burrows FRS.
Malcolm’s life, career and exceptional scientific achievements were deeply entwined with the Department and with Cambridge. He was educated at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and was an undergraduate at Jesus College, where he took Part II Zoology. After working at St Andrews and in the US, he returned to the Department in 1974 and was appointed a lecturer two years later. In 1996, he became the eighth 1866 Professor of Zoology and Head of Department, serving in this capacity until his retirement in 2010. He continued his research long after he retired, and only stopped coming into the Department late last year.
Everything that seems familiar today about the Department is a legacy of Malcolm’s extraordinary leadership. He secured the future of the Museum, at a time when many institutions worldwide were shutting down collections-based research, and ensured that its Director should hold a professorial appointment. He introduced the study of conservation to the Department and helped establish the Miriam Rothschild Chair in Conservation Biology. He also established the Prince Philip Chair of Ecology and Evolution. At the University level and beyond, Malcolm played a key role in establishing the CCI, and in encouraging David Attenborough to lend his name to the building where it is located. With his wife, Christine, Malcolm built a deep personal relationship with the Aola Richards, and secured a legacy which will support postgraduate students in the Department for generations to come.
Malcolm achieved all this modestly, without fuss or fanfare, whilst sustaining in parallel a distinguished scientific career as a neurobiologist. Whether we knew him well or know him only from his portrait in the Balfour Library (reproduced here), we are all beneficiaries of his time as our colleague, friend and Head of Department.
Read more:
Malcolm Burrows remembered by William Foster and Steve Rogers.
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