David Walsh died in Sydney, Australia, on 1 August, 2000. His sudden death was a great shock to his family, friends, and colleagues worldwide.
David's career began unconventionally. On leaving school, he completed a 3-year diploma of agriculture followed by 6 years as an overseer or station manager at sheep properties in South Australia and the Western Division of New South Wales. One such period at Haddon Rig near Warren, New South Wales, was to be fateful, because it was there that he met the eldest daughter of the Falkiner family, Francis, whom he was later to marry.
At the age of 26, David decided to turn his back on the land and resume his secondary studies to gain entrance to university. For a man of 26 to abandon his first calling to embrace a return to study, when his girlfriend was performing brilliantly at university, took guts and tremendous determination. David succeeded in gaining a commonwealth scholarship and enrolled at the University of Sydney. He completed a bachelor of science with honors in biochemistry followed by an MSc (at the Childrens Medical Research Foundation) and, in 1988, earned a PhD in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney.
David completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States at the University of Connecticut with Norman Klein, and this was where he developed his skills in his main field of research: the molecular mechanisms of heat shock proteins and their effects on mammalian development. David continued to work in this research field for the rest of his life and was highly respected by colleagues in Australia, Europe, the United States, Japan, and Korea.
When he returned from the United States, David continued his research at the University of Sydney, and in 1997 he became an adjunct associate professor at the School of Anatomy, the University of New South Wales. He received funding for his research from the National Health and Medical Research Council, The Ramaciotti Foundation, and the Wellcome Research Foundation. During the 1990s David received research funding from Japan and Korea, in particular with colleagues in Nagoya, Kyoto, and Seoul.
David was a founding member of the Australian Teratology Society, which is now the Australian Birth Defects Society, and was a continuous senior office holder and was for a number of years the president. He was the chairman of the Organising Committee for the International Federation of Teratology Societies Meeting, which was held in Sydney in November 1997. This very successful scientific meeting brought together individuals from the research fields of apoptosis, heat shock proteins, and birth defects. Only David could make this succeed, and it was held with characteristic flair at one of Sydney's icons and a favorite haunt of David's, Bondi Beach. As always he was blessed and the weather was beautiful. This meeting provided a major stimulus to the establishment of the Cell Stress Society International of which David was a founding member. David was also a member of the American and Japanese Teratology and Cell Biology Societies and regularly attended their annual meetings.
David was an editor and reviewer of scientific journals such as Cell Stress & Chaperones, The Journal of Environmental Medicine, and The Journal of Experimental & Molecular Medicine.
Since 1993 David has been a visiting professor at the Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Nagoya University, Japan. He was always a generous, enthusiastic motivator of research students. Although research was his major interest, he was also an enthusiastic teacher and well respected particularly by science and medical students.
David and Francis married in 1973. In 1991 they adopted a 2-year-old boy from Brazil, the amazingly exuberant Hiki. In August 1994 they adopted a shy infant from China, who has transformed into the ebullient Ming. The family are active and influential members of several adoption support groups. David was a loving, caring and dedicated father. He had a great appetite for life and a real gift for friendship. He was a student of Chinese philosophy and could read classic Chinese poetry. He played the piano with considerable proficiency and for a while took up painting with gusto. He loved sports and sustained his love of yachting long enough to complete successfully a Sydney-to-Hobart race in his boat, “Much Ado.” David was also involved in youth sports in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, and those who knew him wondered how he could do it all in a 24-hour day.
David's brother Richard, a successful publisher in Sydney, said of him: “David's research work was concerned with development and human potential, but this was also the theme of his whole life, the thread that ran through it. For his first 25 years he was sort of operating in second gear. When he met Francis and fell in love with her, he simply lifted his sights. He showed that at any age you can change goals and transform yourself. Most of us are not restricted by our genes but by our lack of imagination and determination.”
His family and his many friends and colleagues will miss him; he was a bright shooting star whose radiance touched all whom he met. He was influential in the areas of mammalian development and the causes of birth defects, and all his colleagues in the field, particularly in Australia and Japan, will miss him.
David's passing has left large gaps in the personal fabric of the School of Anatomy and the Faculty of Medicine at The University of New South Wales and in the units where he worked previously. I will miss a generous, enthusiastic collaborator and friend, and only now, in writing this, do I appreciate the extent of his network of friends and colleagues.
