Geoffrey Schild was one of the signature virologists of the last 50 years, introducing a new system for classifying influenza strains which is still in use by World Health Organisation (WHO) laboratories, finding new ways to stabilise and improve vaccines including polio and Hepatitis B and C, and leading UK and WHO programmes on AIDS.
Geoffrey Christopher Schild was born on 28 November 1935 in Sheffield, England, the son of Georgina (née Kirby) and Christopher Schild, a commercial agent. He was educated at High Storrs Grammar School in Sheffield and gained his first degree from Reading University, graduating in 1958 with BSc special honours in microbiology.
He returned to Sheffield for PhD studies at the University’s Faculty of Medicine, combining his studies with work firstly as a technologist, then from 1960 to 1963 as a Research Fellow at the University’s Virus Research Laboratory. He worked on influenza, polio and rhinoviruses, his role supported by the then National Fund for the Prevention of Poliomyelitis and other Crippling Diseases (now Action Medical Research).
During this time Geoffrey met Tora Madland, a Norwegian pharmacist and British Council scholar. The couple married in 1961 and had a daughter and two sons.
Gaining his PhD in 1962 on ‘Virological studies of respiratory disease’, he continued his career at Sheffield with an assistant lecturer in virology post at the Department of Bacteriology from 1963 to 1965, when he was promoted to lecturer.
However, it was in 1968 when he joined the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research in the Division of Virology, based at Mill Hill in north London, that his career really took off. Two years into his appointment, he became director of the World Influenza Centre there, and started working towards a universal flu vaccine.
According to an obituary published in the journal Influenza and other respiratory viruses, during Geoffrey’s time at the NIMR ‘he was instrumental in developing the system for classification of influenza viruses based on antigenic subtypes of haemagglutinin and neuraminidase, and in developing the single-radial-immunodiffusion (SRID) influenza vaccine potency assay that remains the international gold standard.’1
Geoffrey then took on the role of head of the Division of Viral Products at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) in Hampstead, north London. With his virologist colleague John Wood, he began work on standardising conventional influenza vaccines, and their method was adopted around the world by the World Health Organisation. He also worked on stabilising polio vaccines, which resulted in major improvements and the withdrawal of the live vaccine.
In 1985 he became director of NIBSC and turned his attention to improving the quality of biologicals, including insulin and Hepatitis B surface antigen. A programme coordinated with the UK blood transfusion service investigated blood and blood transfusion to develop better tests for blood-borne viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, and better comparison across different laboratories, so that the transmission of viral infections by blood transfusion in the UK is now very rare.
While in post, in 1987 he also became director of the Medical Research Council’s Directed Programme of AIDS Research. According to his obituary in The Guardian:
Geoffrey’s aim was to get work on Aids moving quickly and efficiently. He divided teams into two arms: the strategic programme, which worked on the nature of Aids and its treatment, as well as monitoring the spread of HIV, and the second arm, which focused on developing drugs and vaccines...The Anglo-French Concorde trial... showed that the drug could not delay the onset of Aids in HIV-positive people or increase their life expectancy... Nonetheless, this negative result stimulated researchers elsewhere to discover three new classes of anti-Aids drugs that have since transformed the clinical management of people with Aids.2
Geoffrey was one of the founder members and the first chair of the International Society for Influenza and other Respiratory Virus Diseases in 2005, the first Editor in Chief of the journal Influenza and other Respiratory Viruses in 2007, and the first chairman of the Working Party on Biotechnology of the EU. He received a CBE in 1993 and nine years later he retired from the NIBSC:
On retirement, he enjoyed a brief consultancy on plant-based vaccines and afterwards lived with his wife Tora in her beautiful family home north of Bergen, Norway, surrounded by his family (three children, a grandchild and countless nephews and nieces). Here he could enjoy his passion for nature, especially birdwatching.1
Geoffrey died on 2 August 2017 after a long illness, and is survived by Tora, their three children, Oystein, Ingrid and Peter, and two grandchildren.
RCP editor
Sources/further reading
1 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irv.12484 (Accessed 16 October 2023)
2 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/12/geoffrey-schild-obituary (Accessed 16 October 2023)
3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5809593/ (Accessed 16 October 2023)