In an age when corporal punishment was normal, Aberdeen teacher Moira Dishington did not need a tawse to maintain discipline.
She had the unusual ability to raise one eyebrow and this was enough to bring a boisterous class to heel.
Moira, whose given name was Mary, spent her career as a biology teacher, then assistant headteacher at Summmerhill Academy.
Radical years
She was there under the controversial and experimental headship of Robert F Mackenzie and retired 10 years after he was removed from the school by the local authority.
Mary Margaret Campbell Dishington, nee Cochrane, who has died 93, was born in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, and the family home was in Ayr.
Her father was James Cochrane, an agricultural seed specialist supplying farms and her mother was Ann Black.
Talent
Known as Moira, she took great pride in attending Ayr Academy where she excelled at sciences and maths.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Moira was accepted to study zoology at Aberdeen University at a time when women studying sciences were greatly in the minority.
Career
In the early 1950s she gained teaching qualifications and embarked on her career teaching biology in Aberdeen.
She was appointed to a post at Summerhill Academy and, over a long career, taught biology to hundreds, possibly thousands of young people.
In 1967 she married Reginald Dishington who worked in the whisky industry and whose father ran a motor engineering business in Thistle Place in Aberdeen.
However, the couple only had eight years of married life together and Moira was widowed in 1975.
It was at that point she began to travel widely. She had always taken a keen interest in geography and from then on, she explored the world widely.
Travel
She went on many cruises and visited South America and the United States and was said to have visited all major European cities.
Moira was also an accomplished bridge player, enjoyed a round of golf and would often research family history at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.