Dr. C. S. M. Hopkirk To Be Veterinary Officer For N.Z. In London

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 11, 9 January 1948, Page 4

Dr. C. S. M. Hopkirk To Be Veterinary Officer For N.Z. In London

Dr! C. S. M. Hopkirk, who was in charge of the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Research Station at Wallaceville until 1945, when he accepted an appointment with UNRRA, with which he served for 2i years, will replace the late Colonel H. A. Reid as veterinary adviser to the New Zealand High Commissioner in London. Dr. Hopkirk sailed from Lyttelton by the Australia Star on Sunday, accompanied by his wife and two daughters, one of whom is superintendent of a kindergarten at Petone and the other a poultry farmer, holding a diploma from Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North. In the course of a distinguished career of more than 30 years with the Department of Agriculture, Dr. Hopkirk has made many valuable contributions to the knowledge of stock diseases in New Zealand. He has been closely associated with research into mastitis, facial eczema, black disease of sheep, and sterility problems. During the ’period he was with UNRRA Dr. Hopkirk was senior veterinary officer in Europe and in China. His duties took him into all the countries of eastern Europe. Born at Hamua in. 1894, Dr. Hopkirk was educated at Brooklyn Primary School, Wellington Boys’' College, Victoria University College, and later at Melbourne University, joining the staff of the Department of Agriculture at Wallaceville in 1912. In 1923 at Melbourne he. graduated B.V.Sc. with first-class honours. A subsequent offer of a teaching and research scholarship was declined by Dr. Hopkirk, who returned, to the Dominion to take up the appointment: of officer-in-charge of the (then) Wellington Veterinary Laboratory. Dr. Hopkirk continued to be intimately asociated with research at Wallaceville, which in 1939 was incorporated in the new-ly-formed Animal Research Division of the Department of Agriculture and was named the Wallaceville Animal Research Station. Dr. Hopkirk was awarded the degree of Doctor of Veterinary Science by the University of Melbourne in 1934 for a thesis on mastitis in dairy cows. He was president of the veterinary section of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Advancement of Science at its Melbourne meeting in 1935 and was later awarded an association fellowship. In 1938 Dr. Hopkirk made a world tour on behalf of the Department of Agriculture and represented New Zealand at the first Imperial Veterinary Conference in London and at the International Veterinary Congress in Switzerland in the same year. For 21 years he was an office bearer of the New Zealand Veterinary Association and was president in 1941-42 and 194344. He is an honorary life member of the association.