Few in our 70s and 80s would submit willingly to detailed intelligence testing. However, my friend Lawrence Whalley, who has died aged 78 after a heart attack, persuaded hundreds of such older Aberdonians to do so, some even under simulation of their childhood examination conditions, invigilated by a gowned dominie. The results of this research were to prove groundbreaking in the field of age-related mental decline.
In the late 1980s, when Lawrence was made professor in mental health at Aberdeen University, his first wife, Patricia (nee McCarthy), a teacher, told him about a forgotten archive of about 150,000 IQ tests that had been performed in 1932 and 1947 on all Scottish 11-year-old schoolchildren.
Lawrence obtained permission to access these for medical research. With Ian Deary and John Starr, in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he traced most of these individuals and obtained their consent to be re-examined, enabling investigation of possible risk factors over their lives. Inter alia, it emerged that childhood IQ predicted not only enhanced later cognitive decline but also adverse life-time morbidity and mortality, independent of social class.
Born in Blackpool, Lawrence was the son Tony, an engineer, and his wife, Florence (nee Thomas). He was educated at St Joseph’s college in the town and qualified in medicine at Newcastle University in 1969. He decided to become a psychiatrist, training in Edinburgh from 1971.
In 1974 he was appointed senior clinical scientist in the Medical Research Council’s unit on brain metabolism.
His initial research interests were in hormonal and metabolic changes occurring in mania and schizophrenia, but he became especially interested in dementia, noting that early-onset cognitive decline seemed to cluster in the community rather than being randomly distributed, suggesting environmental influences. He began a prospective study of cognitive function in the elderly, moving to a senior lecturer post in Edinburgh University before being appointed professor at Aberdeen.
Lawrence was a lively conversationalist, always happy to defend his opinions. He remained physically and mentally active to the end, a third of his more than 300 scientific publications being written after retirement in 2007. One of his books, The Aging Brain, published for a lay readership in 2004, remains a valuable pointer as to how we might prevent cognitive decline.
His two marriages, to Patricia, then to Helen Lemmon, a research scientist, ended in amicable divorces. He is survived by the three daughters from his first marriage, two stepdaughters from his second, and by six grandchildren.
