Igor B Mekjavić, Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.119.49

I was standing by the window at a scientific meeting in 1983, admiring the view of the Honolulu coastline, and counting my lucky stars to be able to present my doctoral work at an international conference. After the ordeal of presenting, I spent the break exchanging pleasantries with an elderly scientist who was also admiring the view. With a look, suggesting that I was probably unaware of this fact, he asked me if I knew what happened to Georg von Békésy after he received his Nobel Prize (for his discoveries in hearing). Having had a biomedical engineering background, I knew the history of von Békésy up to the Nobel prize, but not thereafter. He smiled and suggested I should visit von Békésy laboratory (converted to a museum) at the University of Honolulu (which I did). This was how I met John Bligh, then about to take up an appointment at the University of Anchorage, just prior to retiring. 

John Bligh studied physiology at University College London where  he obtained BSc and then a PhD. in 1952 working with Otto Hutter. He then joined the Hannah Dairy Research Institute in Ayr, where he first became interested in the problems of temperature regulation. In 1957 he transferred to the Agricultural Research Council’s Institute of Animal Physiology at Babraham, Cambridge, where he was Senior Principal Scientific Officer. Between 1972 and 1973 he held a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship in Peru, before moving to become the Director of the Institute for Arctic Biology in Fairbanks, Alaska from which he retired in 1985. 

By that time, John had gained international recognition for his work in the area of temperature regulation. He is best known for his reciprocal cross inhibition (RCI) theory of temperature regulation where the balance between heat production and evaporative heat loss sets the body temperature. He considered the RCI theory as being a unifying theory, perhaps representing the functional unit in the homeostasis of all autonomic systems. He promoted this insightful idea religiously, to the extent that his colleagues even made a rubber stamp representing a diagram of his RCI theory, so that he could be more efficient in his back-of-the envelope presentations. 

The results of our work when I invited him to Simon Fraser University in 1986 further convinced him that perhaps the “set-point” theory, whilst useful aid to the teaching of temperature regulation, was not accurate mechanistically, and he therefore modified his intricate model of temperature regulation to account for the inter-threshold range of core temperatures in which body temperature was regulated. As neatly summarised by Professor Romaine Harvey, while chairing John’s invited presentation on temperature regulation at the 40th Anniversary meeting of The Physiological Society Climatic Physiology Group, “so, the salient feature of the set-point, is that it is neither a point, nor is it set?”

John never confirmed or denied his relationship with the (in)famous Captain Bligh. He certainly shared the Captain’s strict adherence to rules (in John’s case, of science) and remarkable ability to navigate (for John, through the scientific literature). He was a stickler for grammar, and above all proper definitions. Not surprisingly he co-edited the first Glossary of Terms for Thermal Biology (published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 1973). This publication remains, after several iterations, of great value to the field.  

Amongst John Bligh’s other major contributions was his book “Temperature regulation in mammals and other vertebrates” (also published in 1973). It is an extensive review (colloquially one would even heretically refer to it as “the bible”) of the prevailing knowledge of temperature regulation. Whereas this book covers all aspects of mammalian temperature regulation, one of his final contributions focussed on homeothermy, with a particular emphasis on his theory of reciprocal cross inhibition. The text “Mammalian homeothermy: an integrative thesis” was initially intended to be published as a book, but appeared as a special issue of the Journal of Thermal Biology (23: 143-258, 1998). This was his lasting legacy to the field of mammalian temperature regulation.  

John Bligh was a true “gentleman scientist”, a cheerful, uplifting man, generous and insightful in his advice, a delight to be with, not least because of his sense of humour. In response to the invitation from the Chairman for questions from the floor at the Climatic Group meeting, John’s retort was: “More questions? I already told them everything I know!”.

As a mentor, John taught us that, in research, the investment in people is much more important than investment in infrastructure and instrumentation. He was a powerful advocate for honesty in science. He will be remembered by all who had the privilege of working with him as a kind, approachable, and extremely helpful and supportive mentor. He always had time for people. His wisdom provided guidance not only in our research, but also in our daily interactions as scientists and colleagues, something that today is not always offered by mentors and not always appreciated by the mentored.