MIMLS would like to express our condolences to the family of the late Dr. Lim Boo Liat, renowned expert in the field of zoology and medical ecology.
Dr. Lim is one of the pioneers in the field of zoology in Malaysia and one of Asia's most eminent zoologists and mammalogists. He started his career as a temporary lab assistant at the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) in Kuala Lumpur in 1947. He is instrumental in developing a large collection of preserved animals which were of medical importance and now displayed at the Biomedical Museum of IMR. He was the head of the Medical Ecology Division of the IMR which later became the Environmental Health Research Centre and had successfully published 80 scientific papers in various journals by 1969. By 1977, he was seconded to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in Indonesia where he headed the Vector Biology Control Research Unit in charge of conducting research on subjects such as plague, malaria control and rodent control before his retirement in 1987.
Dr. Lim's contributions have earned him several awards which includes the Merdeka Award in 2013 and Sino-British Fellowship Trust Award under the British Council in 1959. He is also the first Southeast Asian awarded the Honorary Membership to the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM).
Dr. Lim has dedicated his professional life to working in biomedical research on small animals in relation to zoonotic diseases. Having published more than 300 papers on small mammals, reptiles and amphibian ecology, his six decades of scientific research and advocacy in protecting the nation's rich biodiversity has contributed immensely to the nation.