Fellow Kenyaphiles, hope you might find this interesting, I posted it earlier on the East African snake forum, about a fine but little known zoologist and St Mary’s old boy (Im also a SMOB!). SOME FOUNDING FIGURES IN EAST AFRICAN HERPETOLOGY. Alex MacKay. Alexander Duff-MacKay was born in Mombasa, in 1939, and never left the African continent. Educated at St Mary’s school, Nairobi and at Rhodes University in South Africa, where he took a degree in zoology and entomology, Alex worked as an entomologist before joining the National Museum (then the Corydon Museum) in Nairobi in 1964. He retired in 1995, after 31 years at the museum, mostly as the museum’s herpetologist, but with spells as both mammalologist and as director. A quiet, confident zoologist, Alec (his friends called him Alex and Alec interchangeably) never thrust himself into the public eye, he called personal autobiographies ‘Look at me books’. He saw himself as a behind-the-scenes museum man whose business was to assist the public, curate the collection and preserve specimens and data. He published little, but we managed to get him on board as a consultant for our East African field guide; to which he added much data. He did publish a study of 7000 carpet vipers that he and Jonathan Leakey collected at Moille Hill for milking. At Moille, Alex became hypersensitive to the Echis venom and desensitised himself in a way that epitomised his attitude to the medical profession, he made a cut in his arm and rubbed fresh venom into it; a severe local reaction ensued. Forty-eight hours later he repeated the process, with no reaction. Alex died in 2003, from complications resulting from diabetes. His eyesight had faded, and he was confined to a wheelchair but his mind was a sharp as ever. The picture shows Alex at St Mary’s, in the biology lab, I learnt my basic biology in that same laboratory!
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 22:34:59 +0000
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