About Alan Walker

Early days

I was born in Oxford and raised in Farnborough, England, where my mother was a teacher and father an engineer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment. One of my early memories is my father showing me gas turbine engines on their test-beds, running full blast — scary but fascinating! But early on I realized that my enthusiasm for natural history would make me a better biologist than engineer.

Studies at the Universities of London and of Nairobi enabled me to gain a post in a government research laboratory in Kenya. There I collaborated with virologist colleagues on studies of how blood feeding insects transmit agents of disease to livestock. Then a post in the veterinary school of the University of Edinburgh provided the opportunity to branch out into other infectious diseases of domestic animals whilst doing consultancies and collaborations in fourteen countries in the tropics.

Writing

My research publications covered a wide range and I continue to act as associate and consultant editor for three journals in my specialist field. My teaching duties revealed the need for something to identify insects and ticks so I wrote and illustrated: Arthropods of Humans and Domestic Animals  which was published in 1994 by Chapman and Hall and was well received by a global audience.

That enjoyable experience took me into a collaborative publication on a similar theme: Ticks of Domestic Animals of Africa of which I was leader of a group of eight authors. Because of the specialist target audience, printing and distribution were sponsored by a development fund of the European Union. It was published in 2003 by Bioscience Reports, and a revised version is can be downloaded from this site.

My current project is for the popular science market and will explore the contrast between the contrary complexity of the natural world and our ability to manage that world for our own advantage.

Personal

My wife and I live in a terraced house of south Edinburgh. Our family has left home for jobs as teacher, programmer and journalist. To relax we go up hills and mountains, and hunt for upland flowers with a camera.