Jack Fowler, renowned clinical radiobiologist, passed away on 1st December, two months before his 92nd birthday.
Jack graduated with a first class physics degree from the University of London, UK, and began his career in medical physics in Newcastle, training with Frank Turner, who contributed so much to developing accurate dose-meters and improving national standards. Appointments followed in London, at King’s College Hospital; St Bartholomew’s Hospital (as Reader) and then as Professor of Medical Physics; Medical Research Council (MRC) Radiotherapeutics Unit; and later at the Cyclotron Unit in Hammersmith Hospital, which gave him access to research using fast neutrons and alpha particles.
He followed the path of LH (Hal) Gray and other scientists, moving from Hammersmith to Mount Vernon Hospital in north-east London, where, in 1970, he took over the directorship from Oliver Scott of the Gray Laboratory. He was director there for 18 years, building on the good foundations established by his predecessors. In that time, the laboratory expanded to cover a wide range of research from fundamental biochemical interactions to endpoints of tumour control and normal tissue effects in experimental systems. The staff at that time were a tour de force in the field, and included Ged Adams, Adrian Begg, Julie Denekamp, Mike Joiner, Nic McNally, Barry Michael, Fiona Stewart, Boris Vojnovic, Peter Wardman and George Wilson.
Jack also took on external responsibilities, including the presidencies of the Hospital Physicists Association, the European Society of Radiation Biology and the British Institute of Radiology. Jack’s clinical contributions included helping Frank Ellis in the 1960s and 1970s to set up two British Institute of Radiology clinical trials, one on three versus five fractions a week, the other on overall times of less than or more than four weeks. In the 1980s, he became engrossed in the exploitation of the linear-quadratic dose-fractionation plus time model, and gave advice on the innovative short CHART trial and subsequently many other projected beneficial modifications to a variety of radiotherapy schedules. This included his belief in the low value α/β for some slowly proliferating tumours, in particular prostate cancer. This was one of Jack’s preoccupations in his later years, argued with some forcefulness against critics, which led to several hypofractional trials.
He was in great demand as a lecturer, advisor, and co-author in many countries. His lectures were didactic, and delivered with perfect clarity and a flair reminiscent of his earlier involvement in theatre productions. He also had many students and visiting fellows at the Gray Laboratory, including Eli Glatstein, Lester Peters and Liz Travis. The Pubmed website lists 226 primary journal papers by Jack, starting with a paper by Fowler and Farmer in Nature (1953) entitled the ‘Effect of temperature on the conductivity induced in insulators by X-rays’. His last journal article was published as recently as 2015, a letter to the editor commenting on the successful outcome of a hyperfractionation trial for vocal cord tumours, something he had predicted six years earlier.
Jack also published a book in 1981 on ‘Nuclear particles in cancer treatment’ and a second book in 2014, co-authored with Alexandru Dasu and Iuliana Toma-Dasu on ‘Optimum overall treatment time in radiation oncology’ (Medical Physics Publishing, Madison).
On 19 June 2015 the first LH Gray Memorial Trust Symposium was held at The Academy of Medical Sciences in London, marking the year of Jack Fowler’s 90th birthday, his achievements and the way forward, supported by the Association for Radiation Research, the British Institute of Radiology, the Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Research Working Group (CTRad), the University of Manchester and the Cancer Research UK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology. This multi-disciplinary meeting brought together experts in radiobiology, medical physics and clinical oncology involved in radiotherapy-related research. Topics included dose fractionation and repopulation, hypoxia and response modifiers, new techniques and predictive tests.
After retirement, Jack held research appointments at many universities, notably Madison (USA), Leuven (Belgium) and Umeå (Sweden). He won many awards including Gold Medals from ESTRO (1983), the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) (1995) and the Failla Award of the Radiation Research Society (2002), as well as other prizes and honorary degrees, and he continued publishing until the grand age of 90. His hobbies included ballroom dancing and getting into the countryside, especially to visit exhibition fairs of old steam engines, some made, interestingly, by another John Fowler and Co. in Leeds.
Our sincere condolences go to his wife Anna, and his seven children from his previous marriage.
In closing, we include a spontaneous quote from a colleague, “Rest in peace, dear Master!”
Professor Jolyon Hendry
Christie Medical Physics and Engineering, Christie Hospital and University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Professor Bleddyn Jones
Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus Research Building, Roosevelt Drive Oxford, UK