Dr Alan Jackson, a former President of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) died in Melbourne after a long and fulfilled life.

Alan, who came of Scottish and northern Irish stock was born in Albert Park in Melbourne, the eldest of three children. His father, Adam Jackson, was a postal worker and devout Methodist. His mother was Harriet Furphy, a bright and forceful woman and a teacher. She was the daughter of John Furphy a clever and inventive engineer who ran a foundry in Shepparton.

Alan was a quiet and thoughtful child and not overtly physically robust. His final school report opined that "given health and strength he should go far". He had won a scholarship to Scotch College where he completed his schooling, winning State Exhibitions in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy (Physics). He chose Medicine, graduating with honours from the University of Melbourne in 1935. Given his brains and his slight and youthful appearance, he was known in his year as "the boy wonder". As a resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he found clinical medicine of the day to be rather inexact and unscientific and he spent the next two years in research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. The National Health and Medical Research Council was established in 1936 and Alan Jackson was one of its first Fellows, appointed to assist FM Burnett in poliomyelitis research. This work formed the basis of his MD thesis, which was completed in 1939.

In 1940 he left the Hall Institute to join the AIF and for the next five years served in Tripoli, Palestine, New Guinea and in Morotai in the Moluccas. In New Guinea, as well as running a clinical pathology laboratory, he performed autopsies in a tropical climate with limited facilities. A strategically important finding was that Japanese soldiers were dying, not from wounds but largely from starvation and disease. Alan was a pragmatic man who did not stand on ceremony. During a visit by "top brass" from the US Army Medical Corp, he was busy performing an autopsy in the steamy jungle heat, dressed only in a rubber apron. The Australian officer in charge described the facilities for the
visitors concluding "and the mobile condom over there is Major Jackson". While in New Guinea, Alan and clinical colleagues, Stanley Williams and Alex Sinclair, published an important paper describing clinical, serological and autopsy findings in 626 cases of scrub typhus.(Med J Aust 1944 2 1 525-539. Jackson was mentioned in dispatches for his work.

On leave in 1942, Alan married Mavis Swan, his life partner and mother of his children Ian, Prue and Trevor. Mavis also became his close colleague running the cytology section in his department.

After the war Alan studied pathology overseas on a Nuffield Scholarship and in 1945 was appointed Director of Pathology at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, a position he held until his retirement in 1977. During the more than three decades of his appointment, Alan Jackson provided leadership in anatomical pathology.

He was a most effective innovator and administrator. In 1963, as RCPA President, he strengthened relationships with New Zealand pathologists which would eventually lead to full integration into an Australasian College. In 1965, in association with the College of Surgeons, he established the Soft Tissue Tumour Registry and was its first chairman. However, it was in his department at the Alfred Hospital, through his contact with those he trained, that the quintessential "Jacko" influence developed and accumulated. Trainees in the department saw, through Dr Jackson and his deputy, the late Brian Essex, excellence in practice, respect and precision in the handling of tissue, objectivity to the point of mild scepticism, observational skills and depth of experience, all in an atmosphere of departmental harmony and good humour. It seemed the natural order of things and not dramatic but the training was unsurpassed attracting students from Australasia and from South East Asia. Later, those who had been exposed to it, would seek to export the model. The weekly routine included daily autopsy presentations to students, a case presentation to the whole hospital in meticulously worked-up Grand Round format and two slide teaching sessions culminating in "Friday Slides" when trainees from around the city would ease their nerves with a glass of flagon sherry while waiting to be asked their opinion. The Jackson teaching method was by example and quietly cumulative to the recipient.

Alan was clever, intellectual and subtle, with a natural humility, a puckish sense of humour and a keen eye for human foibles. The best personal picture of Alan was given by his daughter, Prue, who described her father as a man who "when at home, read, or, following the advice of Voltaire to cultivate ones own garden, listened to French tapes whilst watering, digging, compostng, fertilising or thinking private thoughts and avoiding the social stream". In an illuminating passage she also told us that Alan showed us "how we could live life with a critical perspective and with personal integrity".

As retirement approached, Alan Jackson was found to have an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a disease which had killed his father. He chose to delay surgery for several months to complete his responsibilities to the hospital and to allow a smooth hand-over to his successor. After retirement his life revolved around his family including eight grandchildren, his beautiful garden and the study and enjoyment of French language and literature. He took on domestic responsibilities as Mavis became less mobile. In the final year he was rather frail and elfin but the sharp mind, the humour and the subtlety and obliquity were there until the very end.

Alan Jackson had a major influence on a whole genereation of pathologists. He is remembered with universal respect and affection.