THE EARLY YEARS (1918 - 1939)
Harold Horace Hopkins was born in 1918 in Leicester. His father was a baker and he was the last of six children. Despite the hardships of the 1920s, he was encouraged to study by his mother, a socialist who had a deep-rooted respect for education. He obtained one of only two scholarships to Gateway, a local grammar school at the age of eleven. His natural ability to master languages made his previous headmaster persuade him to drop the sciences. However, the new head recognised his remarkable mathematical ability and facilitated his return to the study of science. At eighteen, he won a scholarship to University College, Leicester and he graduated in physics and mathematics three years later. THE WAR YEARS (1939-1945) After graduating with first class honours in 1939, Hopkins began his PhD in Nuclear Physics. |
This was however interrupted with the outbreak of war. His military service was deferred, and he went to work for an optics company in Leicester called Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, who were developing a variety of war instruments. This opportunity introduced him to optical design, which he later believed was fortunate as it saved him from a career in theoretical physics. His deferment was renewed every six months, but due to an oversight by his company, he found himself recruited in the Army where he rapidly rose to the rank of Lance Corporal. During this brief stint in the Forces, he met and befriended a soldier called Nairs Craig in 1941, who by sheer chance would introduce Hopkins to the medical world a decade later. Hopkins returned to optical design and research, and worked on his PhD thesis on the Airy Disc formula and was awarded the doctorate in 1945.
THE POST-WAR YEARS (1945 - 1994)
After his PhD, Hopkins began a research fellowship at Imperial College London in 1947. He continued to excel in Optical Physics, and developed the existing zoom-lens that was used in televising sporting events for the BBC in 1948. He loved to teach whilst engaging in research, saying: "Only when you try to teach something do you discover whether you truly understand it".
THE FLEXIBLE FIBRESCOPE
In 1951, at a dinner party hosted by his war-time friend Nairs Craig, he was seated next to Hugh Gainsborough, a gastro-enterologist from St George's Hospital, who expressed his frustration about the inadequacy of gastroscopes which at this time were fairly rigid instruments with high risk of perforation. A semi-flexible scope had been designed by Schindler in the 1940s, but gastroscopy was still an unsatisfactory procedure. This got Hopkins interested and he set to work with his student Narinder Singh Kapany. They came up with the idea of using coherent bundles of glass fibres which was published as a letter in Nature, which was published in January 1954. In the same issue, there was a similar article by Van Heel of Delft, although not quite as detailed. Hopkins and Kapany coined the word 'fibrescope'. Hopkins's letter was read by many, including a railway engineer from Scotland, who asked Hopkins if he could make a flexible fibrescope six feet long to inspect some of the inaccessible bolts on the Forth Bridge. Hopkins later said he never travelled north of the border by train.
Unfortunately due to lack of local financial support, he was unable to develop his innovation further. A South African gastroenterogist training in London and Michigan named Basil Hirschowitz who also read Hopkins's paper came and met Hopkins and realised its potential. Hirschowitz teamed up with American physicists (Peters and Curtiss) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and developed the first clinically useful flexible gastroscope, and presented this for the first time in Colorado Springs in 1957.
THE ROD-LENS SYSTEM AND JAMES GOW
Around the same time, a urologist from Liverpool called James Gordon Gow tried taking photographs of bladder tumours through the traditional cystoscope. The views and lighting were suboptimal, and Gow was referred by the physics department in Liverpool University to Hopkins at the Imperial College in London. Whether it was for lack of time or having been disenchanted by the lack of local support for his earlier innovation, Hopkins's response to Gow was somewhat cool. Gow was not one to be put off easily, and returned with a grant of £3000 from the Medical Research Council, and asked Hopkins to come up with a radical idea to improve the design of the cystoscope.
The cystoscope had seen few changes in design since Nitze's assembly in 1879. The initial 'Lichleiter' scope by Bozzini in 1806 was illuminated by a beeswax candle on a stand. Nitze and Leiter used a hot platinum wire which required water-cooling making the whole apparatus rather bulky. The next few years saw Edison's incandescent light bulb developed further by Newman from Glasgow who placed the bulb at the distal end of the scope. The main problems then were constant blowing of the bulbs, and a suboptimal image quality. Despite further development of cystoscopes in the USA, image transmission remained poor in the late 1940's until Hopkins's input.
The traditional cystoscope consisted of a cylindrical tube of air with thin glass lenses. According to Hopkins's research student, it was initially by accident that Hopkins developed thicker glass lenses for ease of mounting and lens stability, and instantly realised the difference in image transmission. He then meticulously worked out the physics, and came up with the glass rod lens system eighteen months later, where the tube had glass rods with thin air lenses. Not only did this improve the image quality and light transmission, it also made the hitherto lens mounting and holding much easier. Since glass is a better conductor of light than air with fewer glass/air interfaces in the Hopkins system, light scatter was reduced. With the glass rod system, the internal mounts which reduced the aperture of the previous thin glass lens were no longer necessary, hence leading to a larger aperture, with a brighter, clearer image. Multilayer anti-reflective coating further improved light transmission, all in all by eighty times. Hopkins and Gow showed the first photographs with the Hokpins system at the SIU meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, using a two-filament bulb for illumination.
Hopkins approached all the cystoscope manufacturers in the UK with his idea. Sadly, once again British and American investors failed to see the potential gain of this ingenious invention.
THE POST-WAR YEARS (1945 - 1994)
After his PhD, Hopkins began a research fellowship at Imperial College London in 1947. He continued to excel in Optical Physics, and developed the existing zoom-lens that was used in televising sporting events for the BBC in 1948. He loved to teach whilst engaging in research, saying: "Only when you try to teach something do you discover whether you truly understand it".
THE FLEXIBLE FIBRESCOPE
In 1951, at a dinner party hosted by his war-time friend Nairs Craig, he was seated next to Hugh Gainsborough, a gastro-enterologist from St George's Hospital, who expressed his frustration about the inadequacy of gastroscopes which at this time were fairly rigid instruments with high risk of perforation. A semi-flexible scope had been designed by Schindler in the 1940s, but gastroscopy was still an unsatisfactory procedure. This got Hopkins interested and he set to work with his student Narinder Singh Kapany. They came up with the idea of using coherent bundles of glass fibres which was published as a letter in Nature, which was published in January 1954. In the same issue, there was a similar article by Van Heel of Delft, although not quite as detailed. Hopkins and Kapany coined the word 'fibrescope'. Hopkins's letter was read by many, including a railway engineer from Scotland, who asked Hopkins if he could make a flexible fibrescope six feet long to inspect some of the inaccessible bolts on the Forth Bridge. Hopkins later said he never travelled north of the border by train.
Unfortunately due to lack of local financial support, he was unable to develop his innovation further. A South African gastroenterogist training in London and Michigan named Basil Hirschowitz who also read Hopkins's paper came and met Hopkins and realised its potential. Hirschowitz teamed up with American physicists (Peters and Curtiss) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and developed the first clinically useful flexible gastroscope, and presented this for the first time in Colorado Springs in 1957.
THE ROD-LENS SYSTEM AND JAMES GOW
Around the same time, a urologist from Liverpool called James Gordon Gow tried taking photographs of bladder tumours through the traditional cystoscope. The views and lighting were suboptimal, and Gow was referred by the physics department in Liverpool University to Hopkins at the Imperial College in London. Whether it was for lack of time or having been disenchanted by the lack of local support for his earlier innovation, Hopkins's response to Gow was somewhat cool. Gow was not one to be put off easily, and returned with a grant of £3000 from the Medical Research Council, and asked Hopkins to come up with a radical idea to improve the design of the cystoscope.
The cystoscope had seen few changes in design since Nitze's assembly in 1879. The initial 'Lichleiter' scope by Bozzini in 1806 was illuminated by a beeswax candle on a stand. Nitze and Leiter used a hot platinum wire which required water-cooling making the whole apparatus rather bulky. The next few years saw Edison's incandescent light bulb developed further by Newman from Glasgow who placed the bulb at the distal end of the scope. The main problems then were constant blowing of the bulbs, and a suboptimal image quality. Despite further development of cystoscopes in the USA, image transmission remained poor in the late 1940's until Hopkins's input.
The traditional cystoscope consisted of a cylindrical tube of air with thin glass lenses. According to Hopkins's research student, it was initially by accident that Hopkins developed thicker glass lenses for ease of mounting and lens stability, and instantly realised the difference in image transmission. He then meticulously worked out the physics, and came up with the glass rod lens system eighteen months later, where the tube had glass rods with thin air lenses. Not only did this improve the image quality and light transmission, it also made the hitherto lens mounting and holding much easier. Since glass is a better conductor of light than air with fewer glass/air interfaces in the Hopkins system, light scatter was reduced. With the glass rod system, the internal mounts which reduced the aperture of the previous thin glass lens were no longer necessary, hence leading to a larger aperture, with a brighter, clearer image. Multilayer anti-reflective coating further improved light transmission, all in all by eighty times. Hopkins and Gow showed the first photographs with the Hokpins system at the SIU meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, using a two-filament bulb for illumination.
Hopkins approached all the cystoscope manufacturers in the UK with his idea. Sadly, once again British and American investors failed to see the potential gain of this ingenious invention.
THE KARL STORZ CONNECTION
In 1965, Hopkins lectured in Cologne, Germany where he presented his work and Gow's photographs. The response was overwhelming with requests for his instrument. He had to disappoint the audience saying no one had manufactured it. A man in the audience, George Berci, who is a well known Australian gastroentereologist, made note of this. Hopkins returned to England, and received a telephone call in faltering English from Tuttlingen, Germany. Hopkins replied in fluent German, much to Karl Storz's relief. Storz ran an instrument company then, and was a good friend of Berci who was very impressed with Hopkins's invention. Within a week, Storz came to meet Hopkins in England and the two men agreed to work together. A contract was made only a few days later. Storz added his own brilliant application to the rod lens: he utilised flexible fibreoptics used previously for image transmission for light transmission. They presented their winning combination of the Hopkins 'rod lens' and Storz's 'cold light' at SIU meeting in Munich in 1967, and instantly swept the field. |