Dr. Bryan Ballantyne
Dr. Bryan Ballantyne was born on September 11, 1934, in Yorkshire, UK. He received his MBBS, from the University of Leeds. He later received three doctorate (PhD, MD, and DSc) degrees all from the same university. He was a fellow of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, the Royal College of Pathologists, the Institute of Biology and several American Academies. After his House Physician and Surgeon posts, Bryan joined the academic staff at the University of Leeds with academic and research interests in histology, histochemistry, and biochemistry. In 1968, he left Leeds to become Medical Officer (Research) and later Senior Medical Officer (Research) at the Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Down, Salisbury, UK (now Defence Science and Technology Laboratories). Dr. Ballantyne was head of the Section of Toxicology and Pathology, where, notably, John Bright and the late Dennis Swanston worked with him. He developed particular interests in ophthalmic and inhalation toxicology and became a leading expert on the toxicology of cyanides and riot control agents.
He left the United Kingdom in 1978 to become the Director of Applied Toxicology for the Union Carbide Corporation. This position took him to Charleston, West Virginia, where he maintained a home for the remainder of his life.
Dr. Ballantyne was a prolific scientific writer with over 500 major publications and 10 books, including co-editing the three-volume set General and Applied Toxicology. He was working on the six-volume 3rd edition of General and Applied Toxicology at the time he died; this is now in press and will be published by John Wiley in October. He had always been the driving force in this project, in particular in commissioning authors. His main interests outside science were classical music, where he had a vast collection of CDs, and aeronautics and books, both fact and fiction. If he had not read Medicine at Leeds, he would have read Astrophysics at Manchester.
Dr. Ballantyne was a very private individual, he could be terse but was entertaining company with family and friends. He did not enjoy corporate politics and would loyally protect the rights of his staff, colleagues, and fellow authors. He was a man of outstanding scientific integrity and followed the dictum of Albert Einstein that “The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal anything one has recognised to be true.”
He is survived by his wife and four daughters (one daughter predeceased him). He will be truly missed by his family, and those of us who learned from and worked with Bryan over the last 45 years.