a tribute to sir rickard christophers on his 100th birthday

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Trans. R. ent. SOC. Lond. 125 (3), pp. 253-256. 19-74 A Tribute to SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS on his 100th Birthday A photograph taken in June 1973 by Professor L.J.Bruce-Chwatt, O.R.E. BREVET-COL. SIR S. RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS C.I.E., O.B.E., M.B., Ch.B., F.R.S., I.M.S.(Ret.) 253

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Page 1: A Tribute to SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS on his 100th Birthday

Trans. R. ent. SOC. Lond. 125 (3), pp. 253-256. 19-74

A Tribute to SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS

on his 100th Birthday

A photograph taken in June 1973 by Professor L.J.Bruce-Chwatt, O.R.E.

BREVET-COL. SIR S. RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS C.I.E., O.B.E., M.B., Ch.B., F.R.S., I.M.S.(Ret.)

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Page 2: A Tribute to SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS on his 100th Birthday

SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS: THE COMPLEAT SCIENTIST

Sir Samuel Rickard Christophers was born on 27th November, 1873, in Liverpool. After obtaining his medical qualification in 1896 and a brief period of hospital work he joined an expedition to the Upper Amazon river and this started his interest in tropical medicine. In 1898 he became a member of the Malaria Commission appointed jointly by the Royal Society and the Colonial Office to study the problems of malaria in West Africa. Later the Commission, composed of J. W. Stephens and S. R. Christophers, went to India where it remained for two years.

In 1902 Christophers entered the Indian Medical Service and in 1904 was appointed Director of the King Institute in Guindy. In 1909, following the outbreak of the great malaria epidemic in the Punjab and United Provinces, Captain Christophers was sent on special duty to investigate the causes of this outbreak and to organize its control. In 1910, subsequent to the Imperial Malaria Conference held in Simla, Major Christophers was appointed head of the Central Malaria Bureau, which was part of the general organisation in India, for training and research in malaria. The advent of the First World War saw Christophers as Deputy Assistant Director of Medical Services to the Meso- potamian Expeditionary Force. His war service brought Christophers the award of O.B.E.

After the end of the First World War Christophers returned to India and in 1920 became Acting Director of the Central Research Institute in Kasauli. A short spell in 1924 as Director of the Kala-Azar Commission was followed by the appointment of Lt.-Col. Christophers as Director of the Central Research Institute, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board and of the Governing Body of the Indian Research Fund. During this period, the former Malaria Survey of India became the Malaria Institute of India, which under its successive Directors, Brigadier A. J. Sinton, V.C., Sir Gordon Cove11 and Colonel Jaswant Singh, became one of the most famous centres of malaria research in the world.

Administrative duties did not prevent Christophers from publishing during that period a series of important papers and in 1926 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. On his retirement from the Indian Medical Service in 1931, Brevet Colonel Christophers received a Knighthood and after his return to England embarked on a new phase of scientific activity.

During the period 1932-38 he was Leverhulme Fellow of the Medical Research Council and Professor of 11'Ialaria Studies at the University of London, working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1938 he moved to Cambridge where, at the Zoology Laboratories, he studied the physiology and embryology of mosquitoes and during the war years directed an inquiry into mosquito repellents under the aegis of the War Office. In 1947 he decided to devote the next few years to the study of Aedes aegypti and prepared during the next decade a comprehensive monograph on this mosquito. The book, published in 1960, is a scientific classic. Following the award

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Page 3: A Tribute to SIR RICKARD CHRISTOPHERS on his 100th Birthday

A tribute to Sir Rickard Christophers 25 5 of the Buchanan Medal in 1952 by the Royal Society, the Brazilian Government awarded to Sir Rickard in 1962, the Gaspar Vianna Medal for his early work on leishmaniasis.

After Lady Christophers’ death in 1963, Sir Rickard moved house to Broadstone in Dorset, where he lives with his daughter and her husband.

This brief and dry chronology gives no idea of the prodigious activity of the man whose IOO years of life comprised 65 years of relentless, devoted and inspired pursuit of knowledge.

The period of Christophers’s work in West Africa and India covered most of the natural history of malaria : the quantitative evaluation of the significance of the enlarged spleen as an index of the degree of transmission, the effect of immunity on the course of plasmodia1 infection of man, the importance of environmental conditions on the pattern of infection, the prediction of malaria outbreaks from a formula based on rainfall data and the price of wheat, the selection of indicator areas for statistical recording of malaria in India, the experimental application of anti-malaria measures in military cantonments, clinical and experimental research on the mechanism of haemolysis in blackwater fever. The report with Missiroli on housing and malaria was a pioneer study of the behaviour of the members of the species complex of “Anopheles maculipennis” and of human ecology related to socio-economic conditions.

Of all the manuals ever produced for control of a communicable disease there is not a single one to match Sir Rickard’s “How to do a malaria survey”. This booklet first issued in 1928 as a guide for students of malaria in India is a model of scientific clarity and practical good sense. It represents the best approach to applied epidemiology of malaria and continues to be in constant demand.

However, among all studies of this period Christophers’s work on entomological problems of malaria is the most significant in revealing the originality of his thought, the precision of his technique and the far-seeing implications of his basic discoveries.

As pointed out by Sir Vincent Wigglesworth, Christophers was virtually a founder member of the insect school of malariologists. In 1898 Sir Ronald Ross was talking about small and large “dapple winged”, “grey”, “striped” or “brindled” mosquitoes, but three years later Stephens and Christophers could relate the transmission of malaria to the presence of well defined species of Anopheles. Anopheles minimus Theo. then called A.christophersi was recognised as an important vector, to be joined soon by A.culicifacies Giles, and A.JEuviutilis James (then A.Zistoni). On the other hand, A.subpictus Grassi (then A.rossi) was exonerated from any guilt in this respect. Within five years the most important Anopheles of India were classified into natural groups not only by the mor- phology of the adult, but also by the differences in their eggs and larvae. By 1916 Christophers had revised the nomenclature of Indian Anophelini and produced a list of valid species and varieties with a key to 38 species.

The internal anatomy of the mosquito fascinated Sir Rickard from the early years of his work. In 1901, he published his first study on the structure and function of the genital organs of the female Anopheles; his account of the various stages of development of the ovary and follicle in relation to the gonotrophic cycle predicted the importance of these observations for the modern methods of age grouping of the vector population. Later he described the male genitalia of a number of oriental species of Anopheles and stressed the importance of these findings for systematics.

His taxonomic work on Anopheles culminated in 1933 in the volume on Indian Anophelini in the “Fauna of British India”. Sir Vincent Wigglesworth describes this

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256 L.J.Bruce-Chwatt: A tribute to Sir Rickard Christophers

book in the following words : “It combines immense scholarship and meticulous taxo- nomy and synonymy with provision for the simpler, everyday needs of the practicing medical entomologist”. No greater praise could be given!

But Christophers’s interest in medical entomology was not limited to Anopheles. Study of the anatomy and histology of ticks, observations on the genital apparatus of the bed-bug, anatomy of Phlebotomus and above all, the integral study of Aedes aegypti, published in 1960-a monument of erudition, experience, balanced judgement and superb presentation. And if this is not enough, one would be tempted to mention Sir Rickard’s contributions to protozoology : his confirmation of the presence of Leishmania in Kala-azar, his discovery of Thelohania-a pathogenic microsporidian of Diptera, his improvement of in vitro cultivation of P.knowlesi, his demonstration of the sporogonic cycle of two species of Hepatozoon in the louse and the tick, his studies with Shortt on Babesia canis.

A list of all scientific publications under Sir Rickard’s name comprises some 250 references covering an astonishing range of interests. But what about the man whose achievements we admire? In what way could one justify the epithet of “compleat scientist” suggested as a title of this tribute?

No generalisations can be made about science. At one extreme it appears as a means of serving our technical progress; at the other it is seen as an infallible key to the truth about the universe. No one view is held by all and anyone may at different times find different views convenient. The same can be said about scientists who range from the amiable, absent-minded and ridiculous Professor Strabismus to the coldly precise and arrogant T.V. personality with his private line to the Almighty. But all of us recognise the greatness of those few whose exceptional skills, imagination, inquisitiveness, deter- mination and contemplative powers extend the frontiers of knowledge. These are the men for whom Bacon speaks: “There is no power on earth which setteth up a throne or chair of state in the spirits and souls of men and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions and beliefs but knowledge and learning.”

Sir Rickard’s own way of pursuit of knowledge was close to the old term of “natural philosophy”. Deeply involved in the “game concept” of research by applying the art of observation and understanding the pattern of things seen, he was also concerned with man’s relation to them and to the whole environment.

It is in this respect that Sir Rickard’s personality brings to one’s mind a comparison with Linnaeus. Wilfred Blunt’s recent biography of Linnaeus calls him the “compleat naturalist” and there is in Sir Rickard’s work the same broad sweep of interests and achievements. Another incidental point in the life of Linnaeus adds an amusing note and a professional link between the two. I n 1735 Linnaeus obtained a cut-price, Dutch medical degree at the University of Harderwijk after submitting a thesis on the cause of intermittent fevers in which he concluded that they are due to living on clay soil. But a complete scientist is the one who “wears his weight of leaning lightly like a flower” and in whom the compulsion to communicate is second only to his desire to understand. His reward is that of observing the success and loyalty of those to whom he gave the impetus for creative thought.

An appreciation delivered by Professor L. J.Bruce-Chwatt, O.B.E., on the occasion of the centenary celebration in honour of Sir Rickard Christophers, C.I.E., O.B.E., I.M.S., F.R.S., organised by The Royal Entomological Society of London in December 1973.