Ronald Kenneth Macpherson died on 9 November 1993, at the age of 83. Like the late Otto Edholm and Joe Weiner – both of them close colleagues – he was one of a distinguished group of physiologists who made pioneering studies of human temperature regulation during and after the Second World War. He was a meticulous investigator, a gifted teacher, and a respected colleague.

Mac, as he was universally known, was born in Brisbane, son of Duncan Macpherson, a draper, and Phyllis Catherine Macpherson née Haig. He was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland. After graduating with the degree of BSc (subsequently MSc) he joined the staff of the Brisbane Teachers’ Training College (1931-35), and later (1936-40) the University’s Biology Department, in which he served as senior demonstrator in zoology and assistant lecturer in biology.

Mac served in the 2nd AIF as a Staff Sergeant in the Middle East (1940-42) and as a Captain (RAAMC) in the Pacific theatre (1944-46), interrupting his military service to complete his medical degree at the University of Queensland and serve his residency (1946-47) in the Brisbane General Hospital. For the remainder of the 1940s he was a lecturer (1947) and senior lecturer (1948) in the University’s Department of Physiology, and honorary assistant outpatient physician (1947-50) in the Mater Misericordiae Public Hospital, Brisbane. In 1948 he was awarded the degree of MD for his wartime investigation of the troublesome and controversial problem of ‘tropical fatigue’.

In 1950 he joined the Royal Naval Tropical Research Unit at Singapore and participated in its extensive investigations of human responses to heat. Returning to London with the Unit in 1953, he served until 1958 on the senior scientific staff of the Division of Human Physiology in the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research. During this time he compiled and edited the numerous reports of the Singapore research, and of associated research in London and Oxford, and reviewed the implications of the findings (Physiological Responses to Hot Environments, MRC Special Report Series No. 298, HMSO 1960). He also took part in laboratory investigations of temperature regulation with Otto Edholm and his colleagues, and in 1956 made an important survey of living conditions in Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea (Environmental Problems in Tropical Australia, Commonwealth Government Printer 1956).

In 1958 Mac returned to Australia as the founding director of the Environmental Health Section in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and as lecturer in Environmental Health at the University of Sydney. He was appointed senior lecturer in 1963 and professor of Environmental Health in 1966, and was principal of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine from 1968 to 1977. Following his retirement in 1977 he was appointed honorary associate in the University’s Department of Architectural Science (1978), and emeritus professor of Environmental Health (1 980). He was the RAN’s consultant on medical aspects of habitability (1964-77), and was a member of the NHMRC (1969-75).

Mac undertook both basic and applied research, in the laboratory and in the field. His work embraced the practical problems of living and working in hot environments, whole-body responses to the controlled environments of climatic chambers, the mechanisms of fever, and the control of peripheral blood flow. It was characterised by rigorous design and execution of experiments, accurate observation, and precise and elegant expression in reporting the results. His account of the Singapore work is a classic presentation of one of the major studies in its field; and his review ‘The assessment of the thermal environment’ (Br J Industr Med 1962 19: 151-164) remains one of the most comprehensive, lucid, and downright sensible discussions yet published on this widely misunderstood subject.

Mac’s lectures were characterised by clarity of organisation and expression, and were highly regarded by his students. Colleagues and students seeking his comments on their draft manuscripts met with endless patience: Mac would react to their most glaring faults with nothing worse than mild puzzlement, and would gently guide the author towards recognising and correcting them. Mac was widely regarded as ‘a gentleman of the old school’, and he earned the affection and respect of people in many walks of life.