Page 67 - eclipse - Autumn 2018

IN MEMORIUM
The RVC would like to add that Dr Keymer received from the College,
in 2014, an Honorary Degree of Recognition along with some of his fellow classmates. The awards were given to those that were awarded a diploma of membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons prior to the RVC becoming part of the University of London in 1949. The first Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine was not awarded at the RVC until 1957. Dr Keymer received his award
in Absentia. The Honorary Degree
was in recognition of the hard work, dedication and determination in bringing the profession to where it is today.
ANDREW COULSON (1976)
In a veterinary career spanning 40 years Andrew worked in mixed practice, industry and the public sector, before in retirement continuing to hold veterinary- related public appointments.
Andrew was the third of four children born in Cardiff to a non-veterinary, non- agricultural linked family. He often joked that the nearest he came to a veterinary pedigree was when his mother went into labour whilst waiting in the sawdust- floored shop of the local butchers.
Educated at St Illtyd’s College, Cardiff, Andrew took all his ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels one year earlier as part of an experimental fast-track scheme at the school. Along with his peers though, he still had to wait until he was 18 before receiving
a place at the RVC in 1971. Whilst at the RVC he participated fully in student life; becoming the London link for the 1972 Undergraduate Research Team working in Uganda; a member of the West Africa Research Team to Nigeria in 1975; President of the Students Union Society 74/75; and meeting his future wife Arlene (nee Crease).
He joined the mixed practice of the 1971/2 RCVS President, McConnochie Ingram & Ptnrs, in Oxted, Surrey where he developed interests in clinical based research – working on prostaglandin synthesis in canine mammary tumours in a joint study with King’s College, London. An opportunity to move from practice to R&D within a veterinary pharmaceutical company saw him join The Upjohn Company where he spent the next 16 years. Within the animal pharmaceutical industry he was an active member of
the Board and several committees of NOAH; chaired their Regulatory
& Technical Committee, represented the UK industry in FEDESA Working Parties, and found time to study (1989/90) for an MSc in biotechnology which was then an emerging pharmaceutical discipline.
Eschewing his veterinary bias, his Master’s dissertation was on restriction- fragment polymorphisms in plants of
the Allium family. Following company reorganisation, he joined Covance (then Hazelton) Laboratories in Harrogate to set up a veterinary clinical trials unit and to lead on veterinary pre-clinical projects. As a past-chair, he continued to support the AVCPT, with whom he had organised a scientifically, socially and financially successful European Congress in
1994, but remained concerned and vocal over the ongoing reduction in UK based animal health R&D as companies merged, were acquired or opted out of veterinary pharmaceuticals.
Leaving Covance he joined the
Home Office as an Inspector under
the Animals (Scientific Procedures)
Act, before retiring from the HO as a Superintending Inspector. In retirement he was appointed as a Commissioner to the British Pharmacopoeia Commission; Non-Executive Director with the
VMD and a Trustee of the Covance Laboratories Pension Scheme, but again found time to study; this time for an MA in Victorian Studies (dissertation on rabies and hydrophobia in Victorian Bradford) and to buy a small mountain retreat in the Comino Valley in Italy.
Outside of his professional life he and Arlene had one daughter, Odette, born in 1986 of whom he was immensely proud. Her death in a tragic accident at school in 2001 was a massive loss to them both, as was well known to so many of their veterinary friends and colleagues.
A school governor at Ripon Grammar School, Ecumenical Observer on the council of Ripon Cathedral, Director for 12 years of the ‘other’ RCVS (Ripon Council for Voluntary Services), Andrew was also Chair of the Sharow Community History Group. In free time, Andrew & Arlene were well known in classic car circles, participating in the 1999 u
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