Peter Ian Harrison (1943–2025)

On 23 October 2025, Peter Ian Harrison, aged 82 years, of Watlington, Oxfordshire. Mr Harrison left the Society in 2020.

Tribute

Peter Ian Harrison died peacefully on 23 October 2025, aged 82 years in Watlington, Oxfordshire, after moving back to be near his family from Clitheroe, Lancashire, where he grew up.

He graduated from Manchester School of Pharmacy in 1965 and did his preregistration year at Crumpsall Hospital in north Manchester. Post registration, Ian worked at Manchester Royal Infirmary and from there he moved on to be deputy chief pharmacist at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London in 1968. He subsequently became deputy chief pharmacist at St Mary’s Hospital London.

In 1974, he served as chief pharmacist at the Hammersmith Hospital, later a district pharmaceutical officer at the Hammersmith and Queen Charlotte’s Special Health Authority and honorary lecturer in clinical pharmacology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School London. He then became area pharmaceutical officer for the Hammersmith Hospital and Charing Cross Hospital before moving to be regional pharmacist for the Oxford region in 1989.

During his early days in London, he graduated from King’s College with an MPhil. He later became a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for services to hospital pharmacy. While in Oxford, he gained an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.

After retirement from the NHS, he did consultancy work and eventually set up Alchemy Pharmatech.

I first met Ian when I went to look around the Hammersmith Hospital in the late 1980s. Our paths crossed many times later as consultants in the Unit for Health Services Development at the University of London in the late 1990s, then when we both were on the board of the Institute of Pharmacy Management from 2004. Ian remained on the board until 2018.

In business settings, he was always a positive, considered and reflective contributor with a good sense of humour. Privately, he was a good friend and ally with lots of banter over our respective local rival football teams.

He was a great asset to the profession, the people and patients of the Oxford region and the organisations he worked for. Alchemy Pharmatech continues his legacy.

With love, best wishes and sympathy to his wife Joan — who was his school girlfriend — their son Richard, daughter Claire, their partners and four grandchildren.

He was buried in Clitheroe, Lancashire, on 14 November 2025.

Howard McNulty, FRPharmS member