Duncan , Annie (Nan) , 1926-2000 , zoologist

Born London, 28 November 1926, but spent her earliest years in Russia where her father went to work; graduated in 1948 with an External London BSc in Zoology taken at University College, Leicester; studied marine worms in the Isle of Man and was awarded her PhD from the University of Liverpool; moved, in 1952, to Royal Holloway College as Assistant Lecturer in the newly opened Zoology Department; promoted to Lecturer in 1957 and retired in 1991 as Reader in Ecology, a University of London appointment which she had held since 1976; her research was concerned with plankton living in the reservoirs situated around Staines and she supervised investigations into the fauna of the slow sand filters through which London's drinking water is purified; her data has been incorporated into increasingly refined models of how reservoir ecosystems work; pioneer in the use of echo-sounding to measure fish populations, equipment now used routinely by the Environment Agency; with a botanical colleague, she started a BSc Ecology degree at a time when only three such degrees were taught in the UK. At the time of Dr Duncan's death, she was the initiator and principal coordinator of a complex project funded by the EU which embraced numerous colleagues from three European and three SE Asian countries; worked extensively in Europe, Africa and the USA; maintained a lifelong association with socialism and eastern Europe, maintaining communications across the Iron Curtain; after her formal retirement Duncan remained active in research as Emeritus Reader in Ecology and Leader of the Hydroacoustic Unit at the Royal Holloway Institute of Environmental Research; died 3 October 2000.