The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7225 p761
23 November 2002

Society summary

Privy Council appoints veterinary surgeon to serve on Society's Council

The Privy Council has appointed a past president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons as one of its three nominees on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council. The new Council member is Professor Bob Michell, BSc, BVetMed, PhD, DSc, FRSA, MRCVS, who has an academic and research record in both animal and human medicine.

Professor Michell will serve a three-year term of office on the Society's Council until 31 October 2005. His appointment follows the recent retirement of Dr John Evans, who had been a Privy Council nominee on the Council since 1987.

Professor Michell's career has been mainly in comparative medicine and in strengthening links between basic and clinical science. Since 1993 he has held a personal chair in applied physiology and comparative medicine at the University of London, and he is currently based at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. His research focus is renal disease and hypertension in man and animals, and involves researchers at Addenbrooke's Hospital (University of Cambridge) and veterinary collaborators in Cambridge, the University of Oslo and the University of California, Davis.

Professor Michell was president of the RCVS in 1999–2000 and remains on the college's council. He is also vice-chairman of the Comparative Clinical Science Foundation, which exists to fund the first five years of a Medical Research Council comparative clinical science panel, for which no capital or research funding is initially available from the MRC itself.

Professor Michell has served as president of the Veterinary Research Club (1988–89) and of the Association of Veterinary Teachers and Research Workers (a specialist division of the British Veterinary Association).

He graduated from the University of London (Royal Veterinary College) in physiology in 1962 and in veterinary medicine in 1964. He is the only veterinarian to have been awarded both the Harkness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund of New York (1969-71) and the Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research (1974–76); no other veterinarian has subsequently won either award.