Glyn Morton obituary | Biology
My grandfather Glyn Morton, who has died aged 86, was an environmental microbiologist based for most of his career at the University of Lancashire, rising from senior lecturer to professor and then head of department. In 2007 he was appointed emeritus professor.
He published more than 140 papers and supervised dozens of researchers. He was a chartered biologist, a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and a president of the International Biodeterioration Society (1985-87).
He was also a performer in many amateur dramatic and operatic productions, for the most part at the Lowther Pavilion in Lytham. Glyn became especially acclaimed for his many turns as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Being an in-character father to multiple casts of daughters reflected both Glyn’s home life and his kind, welcoming nature as a man to whom anyone could become family.
Born in Hanley, Staffordshire, Glyn was the youngest of the six children of Alice (nee Davies) and Thomas Morton, a shoe shop manager. The family moved to Pwllheli, north-west Wales, when Glyn was young, and he attended the grammar school there. Drama came quickly to him: a vicar recognised that he had a good voice from singing at church and had some contacts, and this led on to Glyn performing on the BBC’s Children’s Hour radio programme in the 1950s.
However, Glyn soon discovered a different passion – for science. He studied biology, zoology and botany at Cardiff University, graduating in 1962 and later gaining a master’s, then a PhD at Aston University in 1975.
He began working life as a biology teacher at a girls’ grammar school in Birmingham, then St Anne’s college, in Lytham St Anne’s. Then he joined Harris College in Preston, which became part of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan, now the University of Lancashire). . He was also director of research in the department of forensic and investigative science at UCLan.
Glyn settled in Freckleton, on the Fylde coast in Lancashire, with his wife, Carole (nee Naylor), a teacher whom he had married in 1964, and they raised three daughters, Janet, Sue and Ann. They also embraced a friend of the family, James, as an unofficial son, and James’s children, Dylan and Maisie, came to view them as grandparents.
To know Glyn was to engage in animated conversation, enjoy his tremendous sense of humour, and hear endless dazzling stories. As a Butlin’s redcoat in Pwllheli in the 1960s he met a pre-fame Ringo Starr, whose then band had a residency at the camp. Glyn studied the decay of Maya temples in Mexico while travelling with the International Biodeterioration Society. As a student he once got stuck on a construction crane – in a rented tux. His 2007 emeritus professorship lecture epitomised this life well lived: stories and science woven together, all delivered as if he had been performing in the West End.
Carole died in 2009. Glyn is survived by his children and by three grandchildren, Ben, Jacob and Emily.
