It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our dear colleague Huw Taylor who passed away after a battle with cancer. What a great friend he was. He cared about water and science. He loved working with others to make things better. He challenged us and made us think but at the same time made us laugh. He was known as someone who worked tirelessly and helped many around the world. He saved lives and was always concerned about the poor, sick and of course especially the children.
Huw was one of the key leaders in the discussion about redoing Sanitation and Disease Health Aspects of Excreta and Wastewater Management (Feachem et al 1983) and he contributed to our ideas of how we could actually pull the whole thing off, this Global Water Pathogens project. He was undaunted by the scope of it, laughing about the over 100 chapters that we would have to pull together. His enthusiasm carried the day and he was one of our most thoughtful editors and helped shape the chapters around the need for sanitation and how we communicate our important ideas, data and science to the practitioners.
Huw we will miss you terribly, those in water and health will miss you and the world will miss you. But your wonderful contributions have been so important and will live on. We dedicate the GWPP to Huw Taylor and his devotion to water quality and health the world over.
Comments
I write this in April 2023 at work and for some reason, I thought of Huw Taylor, my former lecturer and lead on the Environmental Engineering degree at the University of Brighton back in 1990's. I graduated in 1995. I am a bit shocked at this loss of Huw, I went back to say hello in summer in 1996 and he was working in a lab and seemed very happy. He was always- positive and wanted you to do well, even making allowances for civil engineers like me, not completely understanding the microbiology! He guided me to a 2:1 and encouraged me to do a degree thesis on UK Water Quality. He will be greatly missed.