John Hubbard: Biography

John Hubbard (1930-1995) began his MBChB in 1948 at the University of Otago Medical School. Intrigued by the field of Neurophysiology, John undertook a year of research for the intercalated Bachelor of Medical Sciences degree under the guidance of Professor Archie McIntyre and the 1963 Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles. John then won a prestigious Oxford University clinical scholarship and completed his clinical training at Oxford. In 1958 he returned to the southern hemisphere as a PhD student supervised by Sir John Eccles at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. From 1961 John remained in Canberra and held successive positions as Research Fellow, Fellow and Senior Fellow before moving in 1967 to the United States to the position of Professor of Biological Sciences and Engineering Sciences at Northwestern University in Chicago. In 1972 he was attracted back to the University of Otago's Physiology Department as the first Professor of Neurophysiology, a position he held until his untimely death from rapidly progressing motor neurone disease.

John is internationally renowned for his earlier pioneering work on the mechanism of signal transmission from nerves to skeletal muscle, in particular the reduction in synaptic vesicle number following rapid transmitter release. On his return to Otago he focussed firstly on trophic factors and their transport within the nerve axon, and then on the control of water balance and role of angiotensin II, the subfornical organs and the limbic system in producing thirst. Later research extended to the theory that alcoholism is a form of learned behaviour and finally to the study of the effects of vasopressin on water transport by cells cultured from the intramedullary collecting duct of the kidney. In his career John published nearly 150 original papers and reviews in international peer-reviewed journals as well as a number of scientific books including The Biological Basis of Mental Activity (1975, Addison-Welsley). For all these research achievements, many honours were bestowed on him: Doctor of Medicine by Oxford University in 1968, Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 1977 and Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1978.

The Physiological Society of NZ was founded in 1973; John was instrumental in this and served as its National Secretary until 1979 and again in the period 1983-1989. Through PSNZ he gave physiology in NZ a national cohesive identity and in its scientific meetings a platform to nurture, in particular, the progress of the country's research students. His questions always sowed the seed for future endeavours. Five weeks before his death, John participated in the 1995 PSNZ meeting which included a symposium "From Synapse to Brain" in his honour. He was due to retire at the end of the year and a new student prize was proposed by Council to mark this — at John's wish it was to be "for excellence in studies towards a PhD" and he later gifted $5,000 to help fund the prize in perpetuity.