My father, Neil McLachlan, who has died suddenly aged 81, was completely blind from his late 30s as a result of the inherited condition retinitis pigmentosa, but he never let his blindness prevent him from leading a fiercely independent life.
For nearly 30 years, he worked as a research scientist at British Steel, devising complex data models to improve the manufacturing process. In 1990, he and two other blind people achieved a world record for blind mountaineering, climbing to an altitude of 6,476m (21,250ft) – in a team with nine sighted climbers – when they reached the summit of Mera Peak in the Himalayas, despite extremely hostile conditions.
To the end of his life, and in the months following the death of his wife, Caroline, he refused any help, chopping wood and even putting curtains up on a steep staircase on his own.
Neil grew up in Johannesburg, the son of James, a cobbler, and Isabel (nee Horne), a housewife, having emigrated with his family from Aberdeen to South Africa in 1947. From Jeppe high school he went to Witwatersrand University, and studied physics and maths. He began working in diamond research for De Beers mining but left for the UK in 1965 after getting involved in protests against apartheid.
In London he did research on the mathematical modelling of furnaces, and then went to the GEC works at Rugby before joining British Steel in 1973, based at the Llanwern steelworks in south Wales. There he developed mathematical models for soaking pits, reheating furnaces and rolling mills. He gradually lost his vision in early adulthood and was registered blind in 1970.
After he retired in 2001, he designed an IT system to create an online news service for blind people.
Neil had met Caroline Evans, a teacher, in 1972 in Warwick. They married the following year and moved to Caerleon, Newport, where my sister and I were born. Caroline became a senior lecturer, then head of early years, in the education faculty at the then University of Wales, Newport, and was instrumental in bringing forest schools from Denmark to Wales in the 1990s.
Neil and Caroline were both passionate about social justice and trying to get all people a fairer deal in life. While he was a private man, and hated being the centre of attention, she was hugely colourful, well known in Caerleon for her purple hair and love of doing a jig down the road. Their differences became the foundation of their relationship for nearly 50 years. Neil often said that if he had not met Caroline, he would have been a hermit.
She died in March this year. Neil displayed enormous strength and courage but, in the end, life without her was just too hard to bear. He was found in the garden he loved in the home where he had lived for 45 years.
He is survived by his daughters, Amy and me, and his grandchildren, Mei, Raffy and Tomi.
