My friend Hugh White, who has died aged 79, was a passionate scientist who spent his career contributing to the understanding of cellular biochemistry and his life outside work delighting in gardening, cats, cooking, wine, opera, classical music, theatre and hospitality. His long-haired cat Ernest liked to sit outside his house for all the world to admire. Hugh made our corner of London feel like a village.
Hugh was born and raised in Calgary, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Canada. His parents were Eileen (nee Wilson) and Hugh White senior, an accountant for the family firm. Hugh junior and his sister Lilyan both became academics: Lilyan was a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. From Central high school in Calgary Hugh went to the University of Alberta, where he gained an MSc in plant biochemistry. In 1968 a scholarship took him to University College London.
He remained there for the rest of his career; as a research assistant, then a lecturer, contributing to papers and books on cell biology, including Genes to Cells (1997).
Colleagues remember him as a popular teacher with a good rapport with students, who travelled to work on an enormous motorbike and was a familiar sight in the corridor in his leathers. In 1990 he became faculty tutor for the life sciences, visiting schools and universities all over the world to help recruit the best students, until he retired in 2004.
He met Peter Forster, a wood engraver, in 1973. They lived together in Hackney, north-east London, and celebrated their civil partnership in 2006. They spent many evenings at operas, plays and concerts, and travelled together with Peter in the motorbike’s sidecar, often to see medieval churches.
Hugh’s garden was a riot of unusual and colourful plants. In 2000 he joined an informal local group who shared a greenhouse in Finsbury Park, which is how we met. Now known as Wilberforce Gardeners, and driven by Hugh’s energy and organisation, the group stages two street plant sales each year. The sales attract hundreds of people, draw the community together and make it greener.
Hugh loved to throw a party: on Shrove Tuesday he would cook perfect pancakes while his guests shared his delicious wine, chosen with care and aged in his extensive cellar.
Lilyan died in 1985, and Peter in 2021. Hugh is survived by two cousins.
