With great sadness...

Professor Alasdair Geddes

14 May 1934 to 9 April 2024

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Professor Alasdair Geddes on 9 April 2024. He was a dearly loved and much respected member of the ISAC family.

Alasdair was born in the Highlands of Scotland where he attended the local schools before going on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Aside from completing national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, rising to the rank of captain, Alasdair trained and worked in the UK’s National Health Service, specialising in General Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He spent his Consultant years in Birmingham where he was also a Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Birmingham.

Amongst other topics, Alasdair was a renowned smallpox world-expert and worked on the World Health Organization’s eradication programme, spending time working on the front line in Bangladesh. In 1978, after the presumed eradication of the disease, he diagnosed smallpox in the last reported fatal case of the disease which was in Birmingham. With his significant experience of working with smallpox, following the September 11 attacks, Alasdair became an adviser on bioterrorism to the UK Government Department of Health. He played a leading role in the national smallpox plan and in biodefence training.

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Alasdair’s early research included work on drug discovery and antibiotics, both in the hospital and in the laboratory. When he graduated, relatively few antimicrobials were available but in the 1960s and 1970s numerous new antibiotics were introduced and Alastair was involved in the early study of many of them in terms of microbiology, clinical trials and PK/PD studies. His group in Birmingham was a pre-eminent centre both for training in infectious diseases, and also for the evaluation of these new antibiotics. Alasdair carried out many of the original clinical studies on the semi-synthetic penicillins including amoxicillin, flucloxacillin and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid and also on new cephalosporins including cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime. Cefoxitin and imipenem were also studied by his group.

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Throughout his career, Alasdair had many awards bestowed upon him, befitting of a person of his experience and standing. He was a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Pathologists as well as a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Medical Sciences.
He was a founder member and President of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy which awarded him the Garrod Medal; President of the International Society for Infectious Diseases and recipient of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases award for excellence in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases.
He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to medicine.

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Within ISAC, and after retiring from clinical practice and academia, Alasdair served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents for 10 years. Under his expert stewardship, the journal went from strength to strength; its impact factor soared and it rose up the ranks of the journals in the Microbiology and Pharmacology & Pharmacy categories. Alasdair also served on ISAC’s Executive Committee as a Director and Trustee and devoted much time and effort to help steer the society during this time. He received ISAC Honorary membership for his services to the society as well as ISAC’s highest award: the Hamao Umezawa Memorial Award.

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Alasdair was the epitome of a “true gentleman.” At heart he was a dearly loved husband, father and grandfather. He loved to talk about the achievements of his children and grandchildren and was proud of each of them. Our thoughts are very much with his wife, Angela and wider family as they mourn the passing of someone so precious to them.
A private family funeral will be held in the coming days and a memorial service will be held to remember him at a later date; all friends and colleagues who knew him will be invited to attend.
We, at ISAC, were privileged to have known Alasdair and to have worked with him. We spent many hours in his company across the globe; at meetings and social occasions and our lives are richer for having known him.
Alasdair; in the words of Shakespeare; may “flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”