Further to the announcements and sad news of David’s passing on August 3rd 2019, the SLTB would like to again remember the impact Professor Pegg had on the field and furthering science and international collaborations in cryobiology.
David qualified with MB, BS in 1956 and MD in 1963, and was awarded the William Julius Mickle Fellowship of the University of London in 1968, and the MRCPath in 1967 and FRCPath in 1998 by the Royal College of Pathology for research in experimental pathology. David was one of the founding members and a previous chairman of SLTB. He has published over 200 peer reviewed papers and numerous books focusing primarily on tissue preservation and cryobiology. David’s contributions to the field are numerous, notably in the development of effective vitrification techniques and cryoprotectants to avoid ice formation during cooling. Many of us have our own memories and stories about our time with David and the SLTB would like to encourage its members to share their memories in the comments below.
Acknowledgements have been made for David on the website for the charity IMET2000 of which he was a trustee, the text of which is reproduced here. David also had an obituary on The Guardian website that can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/15/david-pegg-obituary
David was a great supporter of IMET2000 and Interpal and donations can be made in his memory using the links below.
https://www.imet2000.org/donate-1
https://www.interpal.org/how-to-donate/
What follows is David’s obituary from the IMET2000 website and we’d like to thank Colin Green for permission to reproduce it here.
IMET2000 Board Remembers Trustee Professor David Pegg
September 24, 2019
David graduated from Westminster Medical School MB,BS in 1956, served in the Dept of Pathology there from May, 1956 to August 1967 and was awarded his MD in 1963. Experimental pathology then formed the foundations and backboneof all his subsequent wonderful career as a clinical scientist and academic. He was awarded MRC Path in 1967, the William Julius Mickle Fellowship in 1968 and FRC Path in 1998. Whilst in Westminster he first became intrigued by all the possibilities of organ transplantation working alongside the pioneer Roy Calne. They were both faced by two big problems to overcome, one how to prevent rejection and the other how to prevent or slow ischaemic damage to an organ once a potential donor had died. Roy was most interested in rejection and David set off on a career in low temperature biology. He joined Dr Audrey Smith in September 1967 in the Division of Low Temperature Biology, MRC Clinical Research Laboratories, Mill Hill as a Senior Scientist. In September 1970 he was promoted to Head of Division of Cryobiology in the newly built MRC Clinical Research Centre , Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow and remained there until attracted to Cambridge by Professor Calne and became Head of the MRC Medical Cryobiology Group, University Dept of Surgery in August 1978. In 1992 he set up the East Anglia Tissue Bank in the National Blood Service in Cambridge and was Director for a year. He then moved to York and was Director of the Medical Cryobiology Unit in the University from 1993 to August 2006. He was an Honorary Professor in the Biology Department from 1999 to 201
This tells you little about his achievements. In a nutshell he had the capacity to pioneer new freezing techniques such as vitrification and a total comprehension of the biochemistry and biophysics involved yet at the same time the wider understanding of the overall importance of preservation of different cells for medical benefit, fish reproductive cells for fish farming , plant cells, seeds and meristems for agriculture and horticulture and cells from endangered species whether flora or fauna. He had the vision to see the value of these preservation techniques long before the public had heard of environmental catastrophe and a sixth mass extinction. In the whole field of low temperature biology, he was unique in his eclectic understanding. To add to his own intellect he had a great capacity to inspire and support young scientists in the field and many hundreds owe their own careers to him.
David was too a true internationalist. We recall well him telling us excitedly in about 1972 about his visit to Kharkov to explore see whether worth research collaborations with the Institute there in low temperature biology. That in turn led to other invitations from the Ukraine which Barry Fuller and Colin Green and others took up and have shared ever since 1983 with enormous interest and pleasure. David then made more international connections with Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Denmark. The more senior and well known he became for his encyclopaedic knowledge the more he was invited overseas to Europe, North America and Japan. He was President of the Society for Cryobiology for years and Editor in Chief of its journal ‘Cryobiology for a decade and made huge contributions in each role.
Perhaps less well known is how deeply he and Monica were (and are) seriously committed to human rights and zero -tolerance of any form of racism. IMET2000 will always be indebated to them for all their support for our work in Palestine in dealing with the training of surgeons, nurses, physicians and others dealing with the child victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity. David was a wonderful Trustee of IMET2000 and served loyally with sane advice until too ill to go on last year. He and Monica also joined up another NGO called British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and started up and edited monthly newsletters (David edited the first 106 issues) full of accurate and factual information. This goes out to over 800 academics and supporters worldwide. David and Monica were founder members of York Palestine Solidarity Campaign just after the last Iraq war and have worked tirelessly for it ever since. Both have also actively supported the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and David went with Prof Jeff Halper to Brussels to inform the EU about the war crimes being committed by Israel in Palestine. We celebrate and thank David for a momentous life and for years of loyal friendship.