PROFILE
Robert Wilkinson, honoured veteran of TB research
The director of a UCT infectious diseases centre, who worked in the UK, the US and Gambia, mentors students on the one hand and fights for staff funding on the other
When future medical historians document the global war against TB, they might credit the influence of the UK’s economic “Winter of Discontent” of 1978/1979. In that season biological science graduates were not getting jobs, recalls then new matriculant, Robert Wilkinson, who was born and raised near Manchester. He abandoned his initial intention to study biochemistry and entered a medical degree programme.
It was the first of what Wilkinson now describes as “elements of serendipity” that would lead to his being awarded an OBE in January in recognition of his remarkable research into infectious diseases, with a focus on TB and its co-infection with HIV...
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