Thomas JL Alexander

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Born in Cardiff on the 7th of October 1930. Tom began his veterinarian degree in 1954 at the Royal Veterinary College. In 1957 he moved to the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, which was really the start of his career in pigs. There he was offered a research position to investigate the newly recognised Vomiting and Wasting Disease of pigs.

Awarded his MVSc in 1960, Tom gained a Faculty position at Guelph but the opportunity to undertake doctoral research into the development of gut flora in pigs and lambs lured him to Cambridge University Veterinary School. PhD in hand, he went back in 1966 to his Lectureship in Veterinary Microbiology – a post that was to occupy him for the next thirty-two years, the last 8 of which he was Deputy Head of School.

Tom was a naturally skilled mentor and teacher, primarily in microbiology but latterly in pig medicine, being held in the highest regard by successive classes of Cambridge’s students.

In 1999 he was awarded the Dalrymple Champney’s Cup by the British Veterinary Association. He was a founder member of the UK Pig Veterinary Society (voted Honorary Member in 2006), the co-ordinator of the first Congress of the International Pig Veterinary Society in 1969, and he chaired the Diploma Board for pig medicine at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for many years.

One of his greatest contributions to pig production was in the creation of Medicated Early Weaning which was initially designed to decrease the cost of acquiring disease-free piglets.

He has also been international consultant veterinarian to the Pig Improvement Company (PIC) since 1967. Additionally, he spent fifteen years on the Board of Directors at Hanford Farms, but life took a turn for the unusual when Tom agreed to help the xenotransplant company, Imutran, optimise health and welfare for its research herd.

His pioneering contribution to pig medicine was recognised globally in June 2008 when the 20th Congress of the International Pig Veterinary Society, meeting in Durban, elected him to honorary life membership – ironically, the first IPVS Congress that Tom had ever missed. Although he published many papers and was widely recognised for his work on streptococcal meningitis and swine dysentery, it was seeing his highly popular and accessible book, ‘Managing Pig Health and the Treatment of Disease’, co-authored with Mike Muirhead, on the shelf that perhaps gave Tom greatest satisfaction.

Thomas JL Alexander