P. A. L. Wight

Peter Albert Laing Wight (3 July 1924 – 11 October 1998) was a British veterinary surgeon and expert in poultry research.

Life

He was born in Leeds on 3 July 1924, the son of Norman Laing Wight (b.1898), an executive in a meat company, and his wife Margaret Nevines. His parents belonged to the Fulneck Moravian Church.

When his mother died in 1927, his father sent him to Australia to live with his grandmother. He was returned to England in the summer of 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. He was educated (as a boarder) at the Fulneck Moravian School in Pudsey, Yorkshire. He spent school holidays at his aunt's farm in Buckden, North Yorkshire.

In 1942, he began studies at the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in Edinburgh. He graduated BSc in 1948 and began general practice as a vet in Stockton, but (preferring to work on large animals) assisted Mr Parkinson in Sedbergh in rural Yorkshire, working with farm animals. That year, he moved to the Agricultural Research Council's Poultry Research Centre in Edinburgh under Alan William Greenwood.

In 1981, (jointly with his colleague Tom Newman) he won the year's international award for Poultry Husbandry.

He retired in 1985 and died in Bonnyrigg south of Edinburgh on 11 October 1998.

Family

In September 1949, he married Kathleen Best from Middlesbrough. They had two daughters: Vivien and Annette.

Publications

The Histopathology of Marek's Disease Oregon Disease in Turkeys