STP Achievement Award Winner

Abstract

It is with some pleasure that I was asked to introduce the 2009 STP Achievement Award Recipient to you. Dr. Chirukandath Gopinath, BVSc, PhD, MVSc, FRCPath (affectionately known by colleagues and friends as Gopi), was awarded the honor by the STP EC in April 2009. Dr. Gopinath was honored for his exemplary career in toxicologic pathology over a period stretching back some forty-five years. Dr. Gopinath was awarded a first-class degree as a bachelor of veterinary science from the University of Kerala in India in 1960, which was followed by an appointment as a lecturer at the university, where he stayed for three years until 1963. Following a three-year appointment with the Ministry of Agriculture as a veterinary officer in British Guiana, a chance encounter with E. J. H. Ford (Henry to his colleagues) led to arguably his first formal introduction to toxicologic pathology, when he was awarded a Wellcome Foundation–funded research program at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom to research hepatotoxicity in sheep and calves, for which he gained a PhD and MVSc between the years 1966 and 1969. These three critical years proved to be the inspiration for a lifetime’s interest in experimental toxicology and firmly forged a lifelong friendship with John Ishmael and Graham Hall, who were fellow residents at that time in Liverpool. Following a three-year period as a senior lecturer in veterinary pathology at Liverpool, he left in 1974 to take up the post of head of pathology at Organon International in the Netherlands, where he stayed until 1977. At this time, a position arose at the Huntingdon Research Institute (as it was then called) in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, which he joined as a senior pathologist. He was appointed director of pathology in 1984 and continued in this role through mergers with life sciences research and the turbulent times of the 1990. While at Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), he has been pivotal in driving the direction and success that the company has enjoyed during the past thirty years, holding various key positions including chairman of the Research Committee, the Scientific Advisory Group and Board, the Animal Welfare and Use Committee, and the Ethical Review Process Committee. Never content to sit back on his laurels, Dr. Gopinath took the membership examination for the Royal College of Pathologists in 1977, a time when he assures me the examination was a lot harder than it is currently, and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1988. In recognition of his excellence in the practice of toxicologic pathology, he became a honorary fellow of the International Academy of Toxicologic Pathologists in 1999. In addition to carrying out the exhaustive duties associated with directing the contract pathology function at Huntingdon Life Sciences, Gopi has been a tireless participant in the teaching and directing of toxicologic pathology throughout the world. His pivotal text The Atlas of Experimental Toxicologic Pathology with David Lewis and David Prentice in 1988 has been a staple for anyone beginning the profession, and it is sad indeed that only a single edition was ever produced. A recent troll of Amazon Publications led me to the single, used, copy of the text at the exceptionally fair price of $2,000! This would truly appear to be just testimony to the value of a text that probably represents the only reasonably comprehensive attempt to catalogue the common lesions seen in laboratory animals in toxicological pathology. It does seem a pity that there are no current plans to reissue the book, and I suggest that we should keep any copies that we still have in our possession under lock and key! While a career in contract toxicologic pathology might seem, to an outsider, to be a restricting prospect, Gopi is the exception that truly proves the rule. A more outgoing and giving character in the profession I could not bring to mind. He has maintained his membership of a number of national, and international, pathological societies including the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the British Toxicology Society, the International Academy of Pathology, the British Endocrine Pathologists Group, and, of course, the Society of Toxicologic Pathology and the British Society of Toxicological