Walter Plowright, a pioneer in the field of veterinary medicine who helped to eradicate so-called "cattle plague," rinderpest, died last month at the age of 86.

Rinderpest has been considered one of the world's greatest natural disasters. In the late 1800s, rinderpest spread to Africa through India, killing an estimated 90 percent of domesticated cattle. As a result, one third of the population of Ethiopia, and two thirds of the Maasai, died due to starvation. Outbreaks in Africa continued throughout the 1900s.

Image: Wikimedia commons, Amada44

As the head of the department of pathology at the East African Research Laboratory at Muguga, Plowright and his colleagues began the research that led to the creation of the rinderpest vaccine. They grew a live attenuated vaccine in calf kidney cells -- the first veterinary viral vaccine created in tissue culture. It provided an inexpensive and single dose vaccine that could be used on livestock of all ages.

The world has "never had such a good vaccine in human or veterinary medicine," said Juan Lubroth, the Food and Agricultural Organization's chief veterinary officer. Plowright received the World Food Prize in 1999, the highest award from the FAO.

Within the next 18 months, the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health are expected to formally declare that rinderpest has been eradicated -- only the second disease to be eradicated through vaccination, after smallpox.

Plowright attended the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London, then was commissioned into the Royal Veterinary Medical Corps and worked in Kenya. He enlisted in the Colonial Veterinary Service and remained in Kenya. After beginning the research in Muguga, he moved back to England, where he his colleagues continued to develop the vaccine at the Animal Virus Research Institute in Pirbright Laboratory in Surrey.

Plowright "had a heck of a good career," said Martin Hugh-Jones, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and a colleague of Plowright's.

Joe Brownlie, Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Pathology at Royal Veterinary College, was a postdoctoral student at the Institute for Animal Health, also at Pirbright, when Plowright joined the group. Brownlie asked Plowright about acquiring access to a cattle trail Plowright advised him "to do it and ask permission, even apologize, later," Brownlie wrote in an email to The Scientist. Plowright "was so fascinated and knowledgeable about the pathogenesis of viral diseases that bureaucracy should never be allowed to spoil a good experiment!"

James Roth, director of the Iowa State University Center for Food Security and Public Health, met Plowright when he came to Iowa to receive the World Food Prize in 1999, and delivered a lecture to veterinary students. Roth described Plowright as, "a very nice English gentleman," and "humble."

In addition to creating the vaccine, Plowright participated in missions to vaccinate thousands of animals, both wild and domesticated. "It is one thing to apply a difficult technique to veterinary medicine, it's another to implement a vaccine in a developing situation," said Roth.

While Plowright is most often recognized for his work on developing the rinderpest vaccine, he also worked extensively on African Swine Fever. "He will be remembered as a real pioneer" in veterinary medicine, said Roth.

Plowright is survived by his wife, Dorothy.


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