Robert Sommerville of Blairgowrie, who has died aged 96, was for many years one of Britain’s leading virologists.
His work so highly esteemed that for years he was virtually on call from the World Health Organisation to go at short notice to countries suffering from epidemics.
His forte was devising and developing speedier tests to identify viral infections, such as the various viral haemorrhagic fevers.
He was born Robert Gardner Sommerville in Paisley in August 1927. His father was a dermatologist and Bobby, his brother William and sister Dorothea all went involved in, or were linked to, medicine.
African service
Educated at Glasgow High School and Glasgow University, he spent his National Service as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corp in Kenya in the early 1950s, during the Mau Mau Rebellion.
On his return in the 1950s, he married Mavis and they had two children, Fiona, who became a midwife and lives in Sussex, and Ronnie, who joined the police and lives in Glasgow.
Mavis sadly died in 1979. Both children are now retired, and Bobby had two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren
In 1985 he married Jennifer, originally from Carnoustie, who was a consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and their standing joke was that they were brought together by sexually transmitted diseases. They met in 1981, she working on the clinical side, Bobby working in the laboratory
Specialism
In 1954 he had joined the staff at Glasgow University, specialising in virology — and he often had to incubate highly infectious, even lethal, viruses and micro-organisms in the lab.
Proper dress was still de rigueur and, aware that his tie might dangle into, and spread, dangerous infections, he always wore bow ties, a sartorial touch that became a lifelong habit.
He was frequently called up by WHO, being sent to Malaysia, Indonesia, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries and was even provided with a WHO flat in Geneva.
Bobby took early retirement in 1987 and became Professor of Microbiology at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, where he was responsible for the medical school’s first research grant, into polio.
In 1989 he returned to Scotland, settling near Campbeltown in Argyll and joining the local Rotary club, before moving to near Blairgowrie in 1995.
Church service
At that time he also became a deacon, later a priest, in the Scottish Episcopal Church, serving at Blairgowrie and Killin in the late 1990s and at St Margaret’s, Tayport, from 2003 until 2010.
Both Bobby and Jennifer were staunch Rotarians, both having been presidents of the Blairgowrie club, and Jennifer is also a member of Inner Wheel.
They had many interests and hobbies in common, including travel, classical music and tending to their large garden.
Bobby was also keen on crosswords and for many years actually compiled them. All in all, he was admired as a man of gentle charm, unfailing courtesy and boundless talents who maintained his ability to tie a bow tie until the week before he died.
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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