Our friend and colleague Robert Killick-Kendrick, who has died aged 82, was a research scientist with a particular interest in the parasitic protozoa that cause diseases in humans and other mammals, including malaria, African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) and leishmaniasis.
Bob was born in Hampton, Middlesex, and educated at Woking grammar school. He left at 16, worked for a year in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Weybridge, then spent two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1949 as a laboratory assistant. We first met Bob there in 1952 as a couple of naive PhD students, and benefited greatly from his skill and experience.
Bob worked for eight years from 1955 in Nigeria, once trekking 415 miles (664km) over 28 days, accompanied by a colleague and 28 cattle, to determine where the cattle became infected with trypanosomes. He returned to the London School in 1963 to continue research on malaria parasites with PCC Garnham and others. After Garnham's retirement in 1968 Bob followed him to Imperial College London, where their work on malaria continued.
Bob extended his interest into leishmaniasis in Brazil, Middle Eastern countries and France, collaborating with JA Rioux and his team of researchers at the University of Montpellier. One team member, Mireille Bailly, an expert on sand flies, became his wife and they set up home in Sumène in Languedoc-Roussillon, southern France.
In addition to the research that led to more than 270 scientific papers, Bob acquired MPhil, PhD and DSc degrees from London University, served on the council and as honorary secretary of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and was a member of World Health Organisation committees and advisory panels. He was awarded the Sir Rickard Christophers medal by the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Emile Brumpt international prize by the Société de Pathologie Exotique.
Bob was a man of many interests, which included guitar playing, choral singing, hiking and photographing the numerous butterflies that visited his garden. He also made a study of domestic animals' bells, ranging from elephants in India to hunting dogs in southern France, which resulted in a scholarly, but sadly uncompleted book, illustrated mainly with his own photographs. Bob was a gifted raconteur with a large repertoire of jokes which he recounted with great skill. He was a loyal, humane and generous man as well as a gifted scientist.
Mireille survives him, along with three children from a previous marriage, and his stepdaughter.
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