Dr. Alan J. CHARIG (1938 - 44)
died in Wexham Park Hospital on 15 July 1997 aged 70 following a stroke.

Outstanding academically even in his earliest days at Westbere Road, Alan went on to become an internationally respected expert in dinosaurs and vertebrate palaeontology. He was Researcher and Curator of Fossil, Mammals, Reptiles & Birds at the Natural History Museum in London, and wrote and presented the B.B.C. ten part television series, "Before The Ark", screened in 1974.

Alan was at the forefront of the modern popularity revival of dinosaurs and in 1979 wrote "A New Look At Dinosaurs", which had a great impact, and was translated into several foreign languages.
On leaving school in 1944, Alan went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but his undergraduate education was interrupted by National Service, in which he served in the Royal Armoured Corps, was a member of the first Inter-Services Russian Course at Cambridge University, (where he
met up with another Old Haberdasher and classmate Rex. C. Harris - 1938-45) and became a Russian interpreter with the Control Commission in Germany 1946 -1948.

He returned to Cambridge in 1948, graduated in zoology in 1951 and gained his Ph.D. in 1956. Following a year as lecturer in zoology in the Gold Coast (Ghana) Alan joined the National History Museum where he spent the rest of his working life. In 1964 he was appointed Principal Scientific Officer. Even after his retirement he continued to work on several scientific projects at the Museum and travel abroad, visiting fossil sites throughout Argentina and appearing on Spanish television in Barcelona.

In 1963 he led expeditions to Zambia and Tanzania, to Lesotho in 1966-67, during which the oldest articulated fossil mammal skeleton was discovered in rocks of early Jurassic age, and to Queensland in 1978 which turned up the fossilised form of one of the earliest herrings.

His trip to the Sichuan Province in China in 1982 proved to be the most fascinating of his many foreign experiences. 1983 however provided the most exciting research project of his career - the discovery in a brick-pit near Ockley, Surrey of a unique fish-eating dinosaur, Baryonyx walkeri, from the Early Cretaceous Period.

Alan was immensely proud of his School and attended every one of the O.H.A. dinners for his decade. His wife, Marianne, died in 1987. He is survived by a daughter, Nicola, two sons, Mark and Francis and six grandchildren, three of whom, Matthew, Richard and Charlie Norton are currently following in their grandfather's footsteps in Joblings at Haberdashers. The Association wishes them well - and looks forward to seeing them at O.H.A. functions in, due course. R.C.H.