Professor James Clark Gentles, expert on fungal diseases of humans; born March 18, 1921, died November 15, 1997

IN 1947 Carl Browning, the very distinguished professor of bacteriology in the Glasgow University decided to establish a unit specialising in the fungal diseases of humans (Medical Mycology) in his department in the Western Infirmary. To realise that aim he turned, not to a medical, but to a young man, James Gentles, who had just graduated with a first class honours degree in botany. At that time, the study of fungal diseases of plants played a major part in the botany honours course.

James Gentles was born in Coatbridge, where his father was a steelworks manager, studied at the local secondary school and moved on to Glasgow University n 1938. It was there that we met and became close friends - a friendship that remained and strengthened through the years, culminating in his being best man at my wedding, and only illness prevented me filling a similar role for him..

This was not the best of times to be a student; the storm clouds were gathering over Europe and within a year we were at war with Nazi Germany. In 1944 Jimmy was commissioned as a radar officer with the RAF and served with South East Asia Command. After demobilisation he returned to complete his honours degree. Browning arranged a Distillers Company scholarship in mycology for him for a year in Glasgow and then sent him for a further year to study at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, (where his son James was born) followed by a six weeks course at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London. Back in Glasgow he was appointed to the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council to investigate foot ringworm on coalminers, and two years later, in 1954, was appointed lecturer in medical mycology (the first in Scotland) in the bacteriology department, Glasgow University (he was later to

move to the dermatology department in which he would become a titular professor in 1976). He established the first diagnostic unit in Scotland serving

hospitals as far north as Aberdeen and as far south as London. And

he was very active in research, publishing, in the course of time,

more than 50 scientific papers on aspects of a range of human fungal diseases in international journals and contributing numerous chapters to text books.

In the 1950s, P W Brian (later to become professor of botany in Glasgow University) discovered that the strepomycete, Actinomyces griseus, released a substance griseofulvin which caused fungal hyphae to twist and contort.

He named it the ''curling factor''. It was of considerable academic interest, but no practical use could be found for it until Gentles decided to try it out in vitro against ringworm fungi. It was extremely active, and he went on to show that when taken orally it cleared up even the most difficult infections in guinea-pigs. Tests, with equal success, followed on humans. Now, for the first time, there was an antibiotic active against fungal diseases. Unsightly applications of gentian violet were no more. Glyn Evans, one of Gentles's research students, now professor of medical mycology in Leeds University and president of the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology, told me, at the funeral on Thursday, ''Jimmy Gentles was one of the greatest pioneers of our subject.''

Gentles was very much in demand worldwide, giving invited papers, keynote addresses and chairing symposia at international conferences in Edinburgh, Lisbon, Miami, Hamburg, Prague, Paris, New York, Montreal, Antwerp, Bratislava, Poznan, Teheran, Tel Aviv, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Mexico City and many cities in Australia and New Zealand. He was made an honorary member of thePolish Association of Dermatology (1965), the Czechoslovak Society of Medical Mycology (1975), and the Danish Society for Mycopathology (1976). He was secretary of the British Society for Mycopathology (1967-1970), of the mycology committee of the Medical Research Council (1967-1969), and of the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology (1970-1975).

As if that were not enough for any one man to cope with, he was also a member of the editorial board of the British Journal of Dermatology and of the Journal of Cutaneous Pathology; chief editor of the major International journal Sabouraudia, and English language editor of the Slovak Academy of Sciences' Recent Advances in Human and Animal Mycology. He was a member of the committee for revision of the MRC Nomenclature of Fungi Pathogenic to Man and Animals, and was appointed to the World Health Organisation advisory panel on parasitic disease. And in 1975 he was elected president of the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology.

Thus his influence on the direction of medical mycology internationally was enormous. Carl Browning had made a very wise choice in 1947. And yet he was the most modest of men. His pals at Lenzie Golf Club, of which he was very proud to be captain in 1970, would be more than a little amazed to discover that he was the most distinguished medical mycologist in Europe, possibly the world. They would certainly never have learned it from him. ''Jimmy'', as he was known to everyone, was always the life and soul of the party. Pomposity and ''standing or dignity'' were completely foreign to him.

It is perhaps a measure of the society in which we live that Jimmy received no honours from his country and made no money from his discoveries. He was, belatedly, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1981, and Fellow of the Institute of Biology in 1987. He was an outstanding scientist and he lightened the load of suffering of mankind.

He is survived by his wife, Barr, a son James who is a ccomputer manager in Strathclyde University, and a daughter Carine who is a vet.