Tribute to Alan McCarthy, 1955 - 2025

I worked with Alan when we ran the University summer schools back in the day. He ran the Science strand for the young people and made sure that the experiments they did were interesting and exciting to a bunch of 17 year olds (extracting the DNA from a Kiwi fruit was the one I remember). Always one to encourage and inspire people in the area of science he went above and beyond to ensure that if anyone had a question about what they were doing or showed an interest in the subject then he would spend extra time explaining things to them.

One young man was so fascinated by the fact that he could see actual DNA (it looked like cotton wool) that Alan gave him a small Eppendorf tube to keep it in explaining to him that by the morning it would have denatured and no longer look the same. I still remember that young man running up to me the following morning to show me what was left in the tube and telling me that Alan was right. That young man later studied Biochemistry at the University of Liverpool.

He was an inspirational teacher and a lovey man with a great sense of humour. My thoughts are with his family.