Obituaries
trained athletes. It was Dan who convinced Brasher and the sceptics that a people’s marathon could be run safely, and he took part in the first race himself (as did his twin), completing the race as quickly as possible so he could tend to the runners who came after him. That year he was the only doctor for the race. For the 2015 London Marathon there were 170 doctors, 1,500 St John Ambulance members, 50 first aid posts and three intensive care units at the finish. He remained as Medical Director of the race for 27 years, until 2007, and ran in 5 marathons himself in London and the USA, his best time being 3 hrs 10 minutes. In 1986, he gained funding to start the world’s first sports medicine institute in London, at Bart’s medical college. The library, lectures and the exercise physiology laboratory were widely used by the sports medicine profession and by elite athletes for the five years of its funding. He lectured and published extensively on athletes’ hearts, sudden death in sport and on marathon medicine, as well as organising conferences and running MSc courses. He brought together international experts in 2000 and edited the resultant book, ‘Marathon Medicine’. He also chaired national and international Sports Medicine committees. He met Barts nurse Robin Shankland in 1965, when she was treating him for a tooth abscess he had developed in India. They married in 1968 and settled in Hackney when Dan was appointed at Hackney Hospital. They remained there, having three children, Nadine, Simon and Ian. On retirement in 2004, Dan resumed his interest in photography, which he had started at Dulwich. He was fascinated by macro photography, and stalked many kinds of insects in the wild, capturing on camera their adaptation and beauty in ways not usually observed. He held photography exhibitions at Homerton Hospital, the University of Durham, and in Suffolk. Robin died in 2014, by which time Dan was already suffering with Parkinson’s disease. He died of a heart attack on 13 February2015, aged 75. He is survived by his twin Hugh, who is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the University of Dundee, by his three children and three granddaughters. His safety advice to London Marathon runners, and his medical tent, made him known and loved by many thousands as ‘Dr Dan, Marathon Man’. Numerous obituaries were published in most broadsheet newspapers and medical journals and publications, on which this obituary is based as well as editing by his family, including Hugh. Group Captain Eugene Emile Vielle OBE (1926-31) 29.04.1913 – 02.04.2015
After leaving Dulwich, plans to go to university were derailed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which his father’s business perished. Instead he became a clerk for a London accountancy firm, opposite the RAF’s administrative headquarters. Learning that prize cadetships were only available to the top six in RAF Cranwell’s entrance exam, he tutored himself and came fourth out of 700. Graduating as a pilot from RAF Cranwell in July 1934, he joined No 32 Squadron, based at Biggin Hill, to fly Bristol Bulldog fighters. During a 25 year flying career he flew 150 types of aircraft, beginning with an Avro biplane and ending in a supersonic jet. He took part in the 1935 Royal Review of the RAF at Mildenhall and in September that year he was posted to the Fleet Air Arm, where he flew from the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in the Mediterranean for over a year, but it was not an experience he enjoyed. In the years leading up to the Second World War he became deeply interested in astronomy and long- range navigation, and he became an expert in flying blind using only aircraft instruments. With these skills and qualifications he was posted in 1939 to the Instrument Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to test emerging aircraft technology. He was horrified by what he found there. The aircraft oxygen system did not work properly and there was no gyroscope-stabilised bomb sight, so those aircrews who ‘did find their target could not hit it’. He found that the RAF were not developing and using essential flying aids because of incompetence, but by the determination of senior civilians in Farnborough’s hierarchy, whom he believed to be communist sympathisers, to hinder the progress of the development of essential aids for the RAF. Despite this discouragement he carried out many test flights to develop new flying instruments, including the radio altimeter and gyroscopic compass. At this time he also invented and tested an astronomical compass, for which he failed to take out a patent but later received an award for its development. He went to Canada in 1941 as the chief instructor at their School of Navigation, where he inspired the development of a training simulator to teach astronomical navigation. He then moved to Washington, DC, and spent three years working with the British Air Commission. Here he was responsible for testing and trialling navigation and bombing devices, which involved flying many US military aircraft to assess and validate new developments. Later in the war he became involved in the development of guided missiles and early attempts to control and guide a bomb to a specific target. In spring 1945 he returned to the RAF in England and he was soon appointed OBE for his war work. He was initially put in command of RAF Oakington near Cambridge, which was a Transport Command base for long-range Liberator aircraft. His extensive experience
Eugene Vielle, known as ‘Tubby’, was born in Lambeth, the son of a banker, and came to the College from the Prep. A healthy appetite throughout his life and a robust frame had already earned him his nickname before he arrived at the College. At
the school he was a prize-winning gymnast with a problem-solving brain.
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