An appreciation of Professor John Lewis D. Rollinson* Department of Zoology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK (Received 6 October 2017; Accepted 6 October 2017) The Journal of Helminthology is rapidly approaching its centenary year. It is a journal that has served the helminth community extremely well ever since it was founded by Professor R.T. Leiper way back in 1922. At that time, Professor Leiper was based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the em- phasis was on the developing field of medical parasit- ology. Other distinguished leaders of our discipline followed as editors – Professor J. Buckley, Dr Sheila Wilmott and Dr Ralph Muller each left their mark – and the scope of the journal was expanded to cover most aspects of helminthology. In 1994, Professor John Lewis took over as the fifth editor and skilfully guided the journal for the next 22 years before recently handing over to Professor Robert Poulin. John remains active as Editor Emeritus, and contributes and advises as re- quired. In an age when new journals and editors seem to appear and often disappear with increasing frequency, it is surprising and strangely reassuring that there have only been six dedicated editors of the journal over such a long time span. John Lewis will be known to all contributors of the jour- nal as a most helpful and meticulous editor who has guided authors from first submission of their paper through to the publication stage. His in-depth knowledge of the subject has ensured that high-quality papers result; indeed, I am sure many authors will remain in his debt for the significant improvements to their original manuscript. He has also presented seminars on ‘Scientific writing and publishing’ on behalf of Cambridge University Press and CABI Publishing while on visits to overseas universities. Moreover, as detailed later, John has overseen and en- couraged the publication of many special topics from international meetings and symposia. This appreciation looks back at John’s outstanding car- eer both as an editor and research scientist; it highlights his many contributions to the study of parasitology, cov- ering numerous aspects of the ecology and epidemiology of fish and mammalian parasites, as well as aquatic toxi- cology. Over his long and productive career John has been a teacher, mentor and friend to parasitologists around the world, and this article closes with just a few chosen comments from a small selection of his colleagues. Early career John spent his school days (1949–1956) at Ystalyfera Grammar School in the Swansea valley in South Wales where he took the traditional science subjects of chemis- try, zoology and botany. Those who have met John will know of his strong love of sport, and at school, rugby, squash and cricket were very much on the agenda. He captained the cricket team in the sixth form and found his chief rival was another Lewis (Tony) who captained the cricket team from neighbouring Neath Grammar School. No doubt many key matches were played out. Tony Lewis went on to captain Glamorgan and England but, fortunately for parasitology, John went on to study natural sciences, with an honours degree in zoology from University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In his third year at ‘Aber’ illness struck. En route with the rugby team to play Bangor University, he participated in a mass X-ray investigation on the diagnosis of tubercu- losis and the X-ray revealed an active TB lesion. He spent 6 months as a patient confined to a TB ward with rest and regular treatment with streptomycin and picamycin. It is worth mentioning that TB is still today a major infection responsible for much mortality around the world. John slowly recovered and returned to Aberystwyth to com- plete his honours course, graduating in the summer of 1960. John went on to carry out his PhD (1960–63) under the supervision of Professor Gwendoline Rees FRS (known as Gwen, a past President and founder mem- ber of the British Society for Parasitology and the first Welsh woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Society). Many of her postgraduate students, like John, went on to have distinguished careers in parasitology. John was funded by a SERC research studentship allo- cated to the Department of Zoology, commencing in September 1960. Gwen wanted him to pursue the research she was undertaking at that time on the taxonomy, hist- ology and electron microscopy of trematodes in molluscs and fish. She was somewhat surprised that the research area he wished to pursue would focus on parasite ecology and epidemiology (he was strongly influenced by papers by Harry Crofton from Bristol during his zoology degree). He suggested to Gwen that a good ecological approach to parasitology would be to study infection dynamics in local small mammal populations, as these were readily obtained (by trapping) in woodland and grassland habi- tats. She eventually agreed, provided he would also *E-mail: d.rollinson@nhm.ac.uk Journal of Helminthology (2018) 92,2–11 doi:10.1017/S0022149X17001043 © Cambridge University Press 2017 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022149X17001043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 168.151.220.35, on 16 Apr 2019 at 16:58:46, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at