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Professor Len Lamerton, 1915-1999.
From The Times, 20th October 1999.
Len Lamerton was one of the founders of radiation biology in Britain. He studied physics at Southampton University but around 1950, when working in the physics department of the Royal Cancer Hospital, his director, Professor W. V. Mayneord, said to him: "I think that you should do some research - and for three years I won't ask you what you are doing."
Lamerton visited the United States and decided to investigate the biological effects of radiation. As his group expanded it became the biophysics department of the Institute of Cancer Research. Once when asked what biophysics was, Mayneord defined it as "that which is done in departments of biophysics". In Lamerton's group this principally involved studies of the effects of radiation on blood-forming tissues and the intestine, with emphasis on irradiation at low dose rate.
This was the time of nuclear weapons testing and fallout, and the work in his department contributed significantly to the developing understanding of radiation hazards. It also led on to studies of cell proliferation.
In 1955 Lamerton was seconded to the United Nations as scientific secretary to the first UN conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy, and he was subsequently a member of the British delegation to the UN committee investigating the environmental effects of radiation. Through this work he developed international contacts and became known as a key figure in the developing field of radiation biology. The British Institute of Radiology elected him president in 1957 and honoured him with the Barclay Medal. In 1961 he was president of the Hospital Physicists' Association, which gave him the Douglas Lea award. The Royal College of Pathologists elected him a Fellow in 1972.
Educated at Southampton University, Leonard Frederick Lamerton was a statesman-like figure with a large personality. He was a man to whom things happened. He sank a boat on the Norfolk Broads, got lost when sailing around Malta and forgot his wife's name when introducing her. He told how he once saw a colleague topple off a conference platform when his chair leg inched over the edge; some years later he himself lost his balance on a platform and as he tipped over into the flowers he saw one face standing out clearly from the body of the hall, and it was smiling broadly.
In 1963 the Royal Marsden Hospital opened its Surrey branch in Sutton. The first matron was Morag A. MacLeod. She was St Thomas' trained and wore traditional headgear, including a fringe under the chin, and although the first director of the hospital, Sir David Smithers, insisted on a cafeteria that treated all staff equally, she and her close assistants had a special table set out with cutlery. In 1965 the staff were surprised when she and Len Lamerton were married after a secret courtship.
It is unusual for someone trained in physics to make a significant contribution to the esoteric field of radiation haematology, but Lamerton was an early investigator in this field. He moved on to examine the response to continuous irradiation of other renewal tissues, in particular the small intestine. His research on bone-seeking radio-isotopes grew out of his involvement in the effort to understand the effects of nuclear fallout.
He became Dean of the expanding Institute of Cancer Research in 1967, and effectively acted as deputy director. In 1977 he became director, but he did not relish this responsibility and he was glad to retire in 1980. He enjoyed retirement, counselling for the Samaritans and playing the flute. He became strongly involved in the University of the Third Age, and lectured widely in philosophy.
Earlier this year he developed throat cancer and received radiotherapy. He marvelled at the modern computerised radiotherapy planning techniques, recalling his early days with paper and a calculator. He died in the hospital in which he had begun his career 60 years before. During the last four years of his life, he had been attending Quaker meetings, and he was admitted a member of the Religious Society of Friends on the day before his death.
He is survived by his wife Morag.
Shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, Professor Len Lamerton, who has died aged 84, returned from war service to his former job as physicist at the then Royal Cancer Hospital (now the Royal Marsden) and the Institute of Cancer Research. This was an exciting time for radiation medicine: largely as a result of research on the bomb, techniques were becoming available for radiation treatment of tumours deep in the body and for diagnosing disease by the use of radioactive tracers - the so-called nuclear medicine.
The Royal Cancer Hospital was a world centre in this field. Lamerton himself chaired a group of British physicists who established the internationally adopted methodology for deep radiation treatment of tumours with minimal damage to healthy tissue, while the then professor, WV Mayneord, directed pioneering work on radioisotope scanning.
Around 1950, Mayneord offered Len the opportunity to spend three years doing research on whatever interested him. This led Len into his pioneering work on the radiation biology of cancer - investigating how radiation acts to destroy both healthy and malignant tissues, and thus how it should beapplied.
A key to the problem seemed to lie in understanding the response of tissues, such as the intestine and white blood cells, whose continuous process of renewal can be fatally interrupted by radiation. Len's particular interest in lymphocytes (one of the white blood cells) led him to become a leading member of an informal international fraternity of self-styled "lymphomaniacs".
To carry forward this work, Len built up a substantial scientific and clinical team, which was housed in a converted Dickensian orphanage in Sutton, Surrey; the hospital authorities at the time refused to have radiation research carried out on their central London premises.
In 1955, Len took secondment from the Royal Cancer Hospital to become scientific secretary of the first United Nations conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Subsequently, he served as a member of the UK delegation to the UN committee on the effects of atomic radiation, a body that established, and continues to provide, a consensual source of information in this often controversial field.
In 1977, the institute experienced one of its recurrent management crises and Len, who had been appointed to a chair of biophysics at London University in 1960, was persuaded, somewhat reluctantly, to take over as acting director. The job lasted until his retirement in 1980 and caught him up in more politics than he would have wished for. On retirement, he decided to make a clean break with science and research administration, even refusing to take the title of emeritus professor.
A warm, outgoing character, a great raconteur and life and soul of any party, Lamerton was approachable, kindly and considerate; he was also a natural as the absent-minded professor for whom accidents seemed to be waiting to happen.
After retirement, he counselled for the Samaritans, made music and worked actively for the University of the Third Age, lecturing widely in philosophy. He is survived by his wife Morag MacLeod, a former hospital matron, whom he married in 1965.
Leonard Lamerton, physicist, born July 1 1915; died September 19,1999.