My friend and mentor Piers Nye, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a teacher of physiology at the University of Oxford for more than 40 years, and a medical researcher. His laboratory was full of his homemade equipment, which he joked was held together with “chewing gum and bits of string”. He was a talented mentor of students and junior colleagues and worked to widen access to the university among under-represented groups.
Piers was born in Perth, Scotland. His father, Leslie Nye, was an insurance executive. After Piers’ mother, Grace (nee Evershed), died when he was 14, he was brought up in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, by Janet, one of his three older sisters, and her husband, Ian Tait, both general practitioners.
He attended Marlborough college, in Wiltshire, but re-sat his A-levels at Ipswich civic college. “Hoping to feed the world,” Piers took a degree in agriculture at Pembroke College, Oxford, graduating in 1968, and briefly did research in Swaziland, but, influenced by his regard for Janet and Ian, concluded that medical research would be a better use of his energies. He did a doctorate in physiology at the University of California, Davis, where he kept goats, completing in 1977.
On his return to England the same year, Piers was hitchhiking to a job interview in Bristol when, during a stopover in Oxford, he was persuaded to apply for a job there as a demonstrator in the university laboratory of physiology (ULP). Oxford thus became his home for more than 40 years, as he became a college lecturer at Balliol (1984-87), a senior lecturer at the ULP (1984-91), and then a fellow of Balliol. In 1998 he became the university’s course director of physiological sciences, until 2011; he also taught medical students.
Piers also undertook research on the carotid body, an organ in the neck that detects chemical changes in the blood (mainly changes in oxygen levels), and on the blood vessels of the lung, and the control of breathing in exercise.
He mentored a wide range of biological scientists – up to 85 students personally at any one time – and organised events designed to broaden access to Oxford. He retired from the ULP in 2012, but continued as a college lecturer and emeritus fellow at Balliol. In 2015, he was given the Oxford University lifetime achievement award for teaching.
He continued teaching and examining till the summer of 2021.
Piers had a wide range of interests beyond his work, including the blues, human rights and liberal politics. He was good at photography and computing. His clothes came from the local charity shop; he cut his own hair. He supported his students when they were flourishing, but even more so when they were sick, or struggling, or lost.
He married Rosie Painter in 2003. She survives him, along with their two children, Hamish and Henry; two children, Oscar and Lisa, from a previous marriage, to Mimi Maeda, which ended in divorce; his granddaughters, Ruby and Maya, and two sisters, Janet and Harriet.
