Robin McCleery

Robin McCleery came up to Oxford in 1967 to read Zoology and never left. After graduating he took a Postgraduate Diploma in the History and Philosophy of Science, then did a DPhil in Psychology with David MacFarland on behavioural measurement of hunger and thirst in rats and other laboratory animals. After completing this he moved with David MacFarland to the Animal Behaviour Research Group in Zoology and did post-doctoral work on the gulls breeding at Walney Island with another post doc Richard Sibly.

He completed this work after the 1977 field season and the following year moved to a post in the Edward Grey Institute where he remained ever since. His primary job was to build a data-base for the Institute's long term study of the Great Tits in Wytham woods then entering into its 23rd year.

Robin was an excellent choice for the job, being skilled in both computing and statistics. The Department at that time had a rather sophisticated (for those days) PDP4 which had to be fed punched tapes. As the Department's use of computing increased, Robin ended up running it, since there was no post for a computer operator; for quite some time he ran all aspects of the Departmental computing virtually single-handed.

His statistical skills led to him becoming deeply involved in the teaching of Quantitative Methods, a subject with which many students struggle, but which he taught with great patience, re-doing the teaching hand-outs every year and in (2007) producing his own book (with Trudy Watt and Tom Hart): Introduction to Statistics for Biology (Chapman & Hall).

Looking after the younger generation was very much Robin's forte; he believed very strongly that this was a key element of one's responsibilities. So, he was happy to look after his Wadham students (he became a tutorial Fellow in 1997), the Department's undergraduates and the EGI's post-graduates with their much more demanding problems. But his concern for the younger generation went further than this; for many years he and his wife Gill managed the South Oxford Adventure Playground (and its staff) in south Oxford. He was a school-governor (and later Chairman of Governors) at Cherwell School, Oxford. No other member of this Department had so much experience of the younger generations, and Robin was a recent and very proud grandfather.

Robin somehow managed all this as well as steadily publishing scientific papers with his colleagues, and contributing data unselfishly to collaborators elsewhere in the world. He did so much for the Department and the EGI that we do not realise - yet - what we have lost.