I first encountered Prof. Bannister in the early years of medical school in 1987, just after the doctors’ strike ended, when he came to be our primary physiology lecturer. Despite his aloofness, staring out of the window − not at us students − for most of the lecture, he had qualities which made him more of an educator than many for whom teaching may have seemed more natural.
He was also capable of taking on his students as colleagues, with respect and an open mind.
Prof. Willie Bannister, as we affectionately knew him, was also a giant in medical research, and one of the few people who inspired me in my chosen path.
During the celebratory lectures for the 100 years of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Malta, Bannister gave talks at the St Luke’s Medical School together with other medical luminaries of the day. While his colleagues spoke of decades-old Maltese research into Brucellosis or international research into breast cancer surgery, he talked about ongoing research in Malta about superoxide dismutase (SOD) and the ways the body protects itself from oxygen radicals. This was significant to me, a scientifically interested medical student who was as yet unsure about my future path.
He showed me that cutting-edge, novel research can be done, here, in little Malta. This area of research, is in fact, carried on to this day by professors Gary and Therese Hunter in the labs Bannister himself helped establish while head of the physiology and biochemistry department at the University of Malta. It was clear that this influence on other scientific careers was widespread.
In recent years, the University of Malta decided to award Bannister an honorary doctorate honoris causa. Others at the ceremony fawned around the other honoris causa, Prof. Jeremy Boissevain, who described Maltese cultural ‘amoral familism’ and the depths to which it can sink. However, professors Neville Vassallo, Ruben Cauchi and I all surrounded Bannister, congratulating him and thanking him for showing us to which levels Maltese intellect can soar.
Bannister published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, including one of the first by a Maltese scientist in Nature in 1964 and papers identifying Haemoglobin St Lukes and Haemoglobin F-Malta 1 with Dr Joe Louis Grech, Prof. Alex Felice and world expert T.H. Huisman. He published numerous papers together with his brother, Prof. Joe V. Bannister and in the last years before his retirement with colleague Prof. Rena Balzan.
He remained interested in science till the very end, and was always ready to help those of us who followed in his scientific footsteps.
He will always be a beacon for me and, no doubt, to many others.
Many thanks Prof. William H. Bannister.