ROBERT PEARSON LEE:EMERITUS PROFESSOR Robert Pearson Lee, who has died aged 91, made significant contributions to the evolution of veterinary education in Ireland and Zambia.
He was dean of the faculty of veterinary medicine at Dublin University (TCD) when the two veterinary faculties in Dublin were amalgamated within University College Dublin (UCD).
He was the trusted diplomat who oversaw the smooth incorporation of his staff into the larger faculty at UCD, a move that was not to his own benefit.
Throughout the prolonged and tiresome negotiations that culminated in the unified veterinary school, his unwavering loyalty to his profession, to his staff and students, was evident.
Some years later, he showed the same personal attributes when he took a leading role in the foundation of veterinary education in Zambia, as inaugural dean of a new school of veterinary medicine at Lusaka.
This contribution to the evolution of veterinary medicine in Zambia was a fitting crown to the many other services that he had rendered elsewhere in Africa at various intervals after he had fallen in love with the continent during his first tour as a young graduate.
Rob Lee grew up in Glasnevin, Dublin, the son of a pharmacist who came from solid Scottish farming stock.
After secondary education as a day pupil at St Andrew’s College, he entered the veterinary college in Ballsbridge in 1938 and emerged as a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in July 1943.
Within weeks, he was accepted into the British Colonial Veterinary Services. His book Destination 5 (Killala: Morrigan, 2003) is an entertaining and perceptive chronicle of this phase of his career when he was posted to Tanganyika.
After spells at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Department of Agriculture in Dublin, he returned to Africa in 1952 as a veterinary parasitologist in northern Nigeria.
In 1961, he returned to Dublin as a lecturer in parasitology at UCD and in 1966, he moved to TCD as professor of clinical veterinary sciences. In both posts, his industry, enthusiasm and convivial encouragement helped to create harmonious and mutually rewarding relationships between staff and students.
In 1969, he was elected fellow of Trinity College. In 1970, he was appointed dean of the TCD school, in which role he became enmeshed in sensitive university politics consequent on an earlier government decision to transfer the entire responsibility for veterinary education in Ireland to TCD.
Although this always was an unlikely eventuality, the dean was expected to plan the academic, administrative and physical structures for a greatly enlarged establishment within a conservative institution, unfamiliar with the arcane mindset of the profession it wished to capture.
For several years, this task made massive demands on Rob’s energy, tact and common sense.
When a subsequent government decreed that veterinary education should be unified within UCD rather than in TCD, he had to negotiate the transfer of his anxious staff to the other university.
It was a thankless task, during which his virtues of courtesy, patience, grace under pressure and loyalty to his professional roots were used to good effect.
After his return to UCD, he pursued his academic life as professor of veterinary parasitology and he became involved in many government and academic initiatives concerned with Africa.
As technical consultant to the Department of Foreign Affairs, he was involved in the development of livestock production on the island of Pemba.
Given that it was 25 years since he had retired from his academic appointment at UCD, one had to be impressed by the enduring admiration of so many of the moderately younger generation of former pupils who came to his funeral to pay their respects: truly, the name had not died before the man.
He is survived by his wife Joyce, son Andrew and daughters Anna and Juliet.
Robert Pearson Lee: born May 8th, 1921; died May 21st, 2012.