Dr. John Richard George Challis

Dr. John Challis, Director of the Medical Research Council Group in Fetal and Neonatal Health and Development, is an international leader in reproductive biology. He has made very substantial contributions to an understanding of the endocrinology of pregnancy and parturition, and of fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal development. This has been done by pursuing the general hypothesis that birth is initiated through the sequential maturation of an endocrine organ communication system, beginning with the fetal hypothalamic - hypophyseal adrenal axis, and with subsequent influences on intra-uterine hormone production, and myometrial contractility. John Challis has used very effectively a comparative approach in studies of sheep, monkey and humans that provide advances of a fundamental and theoretical nature that have major clinical relevance. Dr. Challis was elected as President of the Canadian Physiological Society and received a number of awards including the G. Malcolm Brown Memorial Award of CFBS and the President's Scientific Achievement Award of the Society for Gynaecologic Investigation.