Antony Duggan

Antony J. Duggan was born in London in 1920 and trained at the University of London.

In 1944 he joined the Sleeping Sickness Service in Nigeria, working first with Dr Leslie McLetchie and then replacing him as Senior Medical Officer. His work on sleeping sickness included both work on the control of tsetse flies, and the testing of new arsenical remedies. His understanding of this complex infection was reflected in his authorship of a paper that clarified the clinical nomenclature of the time by relating symptoms to the various stages of the host/parasite relationship.

In 1953 Duggan returned to the United Kingdom where, after a short period as Pathology Registrar at the Central Middlesex Hospital, he joined the Wellcome Museum as Assistant Director. He became Director in 1964 and served as such until his retirement in 1984. Under him the Museum, which had become rather run-down, was revitalised and attracted many visitors (both specialist and non-specialist). Duggan pursued his second career in museums to the extent of taking the Museums Association Diploma and becoming heavily involved with the Association, both as an examiner and as chair of the Ethics Panel. After his retirement the Museum was transferred to the Wellcome Tropical Institute in 1985, but closed down and dispersed in 1988 as part of the rearrangement of the Wellcome Trust's activities.

Duggan also played a leading role in the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, serving in sequence between 1971 and 1983 as Secretary, Treasurer, Vice-President and finally President.

He died of tuberculosis in 2004.

More information on his life and career can be found in his obituaries in the British Medical Journal 2005: 330: 366 (12 February 2005) and Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2005, 99, 481-482).