Leonard George Goodwin. 11 July 1915—25 November 2008

For 24 years Leonard George Goodwin was responsible for developing chemotherapeutic agents against parasites at what became the Wellcome Laboratories of Tropical Medicine. Having degrees in pharmacy, physiology and, eventually, clinical medicine, he was active from the start of World War II in the drive to protect Allied forces in the field from tropical diseases. It was in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s that Goodwin had most immediate and lasting impact, through the establishment of five major drugs: sodium stibogluconate, for treatment of leishmaniasis; pyrimethamine, for malaria; piperazine, to combat ascariasis; bephenium, for ankylostomiasis; and phenanthridine derivates, to treat trypanosomiasis. Such agents also became important in veterinary medicine. In 1963 he became director of the new Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine and then director of science at the Zoological Society of London. Although Goodwin never worked in higher education, he nonetheless influenced many careers through his involvement with scientific societies.