Professor Robert Michell BSc BVetMed PhD DSc FRSA MRCVS
Dalrymple-Champneys Cup and Medal Winner
BVA Congress, 29 September 2007
Bob Michell graduated with first class honours in Physiology and four prizes in the final year of his BVetMed from the Royal Veterinary College, London in 1964, during which he was also student President. He also received his PhD (1969) and DSc (1996) from the University of London and is the last veterinarian to be awarded the Harkness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund of New York or the Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research and the only one to be awarded both.
A former Medical Research Council Research Fellow in the Pritzker School of Medicine (Nephrology Section), at the University of Chicago, since 1993 he has held a personal chair in Applied Physiology and Comparative Medicine initially at the Royal Veterinary College, now at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School and was Head of the Companion Animal Referral Hospital of the Animal Health Trust from 1997-99.
Bob was President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) in 1999-2000 and is a former President of the Veterinary Research Club, the Association of Veterinary Teachers & Research Workers (AVTRW) and the Central Veterinary Society. He has also served as Chair of the Committee for Veterinary Continuing Education and the International Veterinary Study Group on Renal Insufficiency.
An elected RCVS Council member between1992-2004 he has also sat on BVA Council as an AVTRW representative for many years and is a member of the Committee for Action on Salt & Hypertension, the ‘Save British Science’ Advisory Committee, the 1942 Club (a ‘think-tank’ on medical research and education) and has been a consultant to most leading veterinary pharmaceutical companies as well as the University of Nottingham.
Bob is also an elected patients’ Governor of Addenbrooke’s Hospital Foundation Trust and a Privy Council appointee to the Council of The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), having served on their Science and Law & Ethics Committees and chaired their Animal Medicines Committee. He was also a member of the RPS multi-disciplinary working party on the implementation of the findings of the Shipman Inquiry and serves as the elected lay member of the Officers’ Group.
The author of some 500 publications, mainly original research, but also reviews, articles on veterinary and biomedical politics, textbook chapters and authorship/senior co-authorship/editorship of six textbooks including the standard textbook on veterinary fluid therapy, the Advancement of Veterinary Medicine’ (4 volumes) and ‘The Clinical Biology of Sodium’, which was reviewed in the Postgraduate Medical Journal as the best in its field. Among his research reviews are 10 in ‘Perspectives in Biology & Medicine’ and others in the Journal of Nutritional Medicine, Nutrition Research Reviews, the Encyclopaedia of Nutrition, the Journal of Comparative Pathology, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Postgraduate Medical Journal, as well as leading veterinary journals.
Bob is Vice-Chairman of the Comparative Clinical Science Foundation, which exists to implement the establishment of the Comparative Clinical Science Panel of the MRC - which he negotiated and which was approved by MRC Council in 2000 - and won the Blaine Award for ‘outstanding contributions to the advancement of companion animal medicine and surgery’ in 1990 as well the George Fleming Prize for the best scientific paper in the Veterinary Journal in 1992 and 2005. A lively and inspirational speaker Bob also writes two regular thought-provoking veterinary columns that mainly focus on the interfaces between clinical and basic science, human and veterinary medicine, politics and clinical ethics.
Bob has made a truly outstanding contribution to both veterinary and human medical science. His research, for instance on the dangerous of high sodium levels in diets, is recognised internationally and is currently influencing changes in both veterinary and human nutrition. There is no doubt that Professor Michell is an eminently worthy recipient of the Dalrymple-Champneys Cup and Medal, the BVA’s most prestigious scientific award.
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