A Series of Fortunate Events: Harold Hopkins

Abstract

Harold Hopkins is known to most urologists for his innovations in the field of endourology: fibreoptics which led to the flexible cystoscopes and ureteroscopes and the rod lens system that revolutionised rigid cystoscopy and endourological surgery. Of course these inventions have benefitted many other areas of medicine such as gynaecology, orthopaedics and gastroenterology. Harold Hopkins however was an optical physicist; his genius was not limited to medical devices. Indeed he could quite easily have concentrated his skills in theoretical physics, optical theory or applied it to optics and lenses in industry. In fact, he could have become an expert linguist eschewing science altogether. As a matter of fact Hopkins did all of these things but it was a series of coincidences that led him to pursue the path of optics and that brought him together with certain doctors in need of a genius with the ability to see novel approaches to their problems.