Professor WE Glover (died on August 29 2017, aged 85)
Notification from R B Crossley; appreciations can be found in The Daily Telegraph (Australia) and on the UNSW (The University of New South Wales) website from which the obituary below is extracted).
Former Dean of UNSW Medicine, Walter Ernest (Darty) Glover AO, died in August 2017.
Darty Glover completed his MB BCh BAO at Queen’s in 1955. After registration he served on staff of the University (1956-67) in the Department of Physiology, obtained his MD (1960), became a Senior Lecturer and, in due course, a Consultant Physiologist to the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority. In the early 1980s he was awarded a DSc from Queen’s (1983).
In the mid-1960s while on sabbatical from Queen’s, Professor Glover spent a year in Australia, including a period as a temporary lecturer at the University of Adelaide.
He returned to Australia to join UNSW in 1968/69 at the age of 35 and at a time when there were only 70 students in first year. He was appointed Professor of Physiology and Head of the School of Physiology and Pharmacology, only to relinquish the role in 1985 when he became Dean of Medicine in Sydney, a position he would hold for 13 years until 1998.
He did, however, continue his own research on human circulation in the School and, in collaboration with colleagues back in Belfast, carried out the first human studies of beta-blocker drugs (on himself) and for which he was awarded an Order of Australia (OA) in 1993. He also pioneered the funnel-web spider anti venom.
Professor Glover’s son, Gary, said his father had been named Walter Ernest like his father and grandfather before him, one of whom had been nicknamed “Darty”. When Walter was born, one of his relatives had said of new baby: “That’s another wee Darty” – and the name stayed with him throughout his life.
Darty Glover was married to his wife Lillian who predeceased him in December 2014. Together they had two children – Gary (Catriona) and Jane (Simon) and five grandchildren Thomas, Kathryn, Emily, Helen and Fiona.
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