Virologist sparked innovative research
He coined the phrase `people, not projects'
Purnell Choppin, a leading researcher on viral infections who later headed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world's largest funders of biomedical research, died July 3 at his home in Washington. He was 91 and died one day before his 92nd birthday.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his daughter, Kathleen Choppin.
Dr. Choppin spent years as a virologist and administrator at New York's Rockefeller University before joining the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), based in Chevy Chase, Md., in 1985.
The institute was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, aviator and Hollywood producer. For decades, it was under the umbrella of the Hughes Aircraft Co. When that company was sold in 1985 for more than US$5 billion, the medical institute was suddenly one of the richest philanthropic organizations in the world. Choppin, who began as chief scientific officer, became the institute's president in 1987.
“We have an opportunity to make a difference in biomedical research,” he told The Washington Post in 1988. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”
In some ways, the Hughes Medical Institute has come to be seen as something of a private counterpart to the National Institutes of Health. But because it is classified as a medical research organization, not a private foundation, it is prohibited by law and treasury regulations from making direct grants to researchers for specific projects.
Instead, Choppin developed what he called an “investigator program,” in which medical researchers at universities around the country are employed directly by the institute.
“Not only was Purnell a giant in the field of virology, his contributions to the entire biomedical research community are profound,” NIH director Francis S. Collins wrote in a statement.
Choppin coined the phrase “people, not projects” to describe the innovative and collaborative approach in which HHMI outfits the laboratories and pays the salaries of hundreds of “Hughes investigators” and their chief staff members.
HHMI researchers have worked on AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses.