Ian Calder: forensic pathologist who investigated unexplained deaths

Ian Calder investigated some of the most headline grabbing, mysterious, and unexplained deaths of the past 50 years, including those of the bankrupt newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell; the “body in the bag,” M16 agent Gareth Williams; and Stuart Lubbock, who was found dead in the entertainer Michael Barrymore’s pool in 2001.

Born in Norwich, the only child of an engineer of Scottish descent, Calder was educated at Norwich School, where he enjoyed science and sport. As a state scholar he studied medicine at the University of St Andrews in Fife, where he continued his enjoyment of playing rugby. After qualifying in 1962, he trained in pathology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and later in forensic medicine at the Westminster, Royal Marsden, and St George’s hospitals in London before being appointed senior lecturer at the London Hospital. He was awarded doctorates in both medicine and science. He had a natural talent for teaching and sought out those students with the worst results and transferred them into his tutorial group, claiming that they were often the bright but wayward rugby players who required a little direction to get them back on course. With his somewhat unorthodox approach of conducting tutorials in the pub, he had a 100% attendance rate and never had a student fail the pathology examination.

In 1964, Calder married Dorothy Hubbard, a nurse at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, whom he had met when she was 16 years old. They settled in Cambridge, and he became a fellow of St Edmund’s College Cambridge and the Wellcome Institute of Comparative Neurology. The couple had a long and happy marriage and had two children—James, …