Purnell W. Choppin, a leading researcher on viral infections who later headed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world’s largest funders of biomedical research, died July 3 at his home in Washington. He was 91 and died one day before his 92nd birthday.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his daughter, Kathleen Choppin.
Dr. Choppin (pronounced show-PAN, like the 19th-century composer) spent years as a virologist and administrator at New York’s Rockefeller University before joining the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), based in Chevy Chase, Md., in 1985.
The institute was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, aviator and Hollywood producer. For decades, it was under the umbrella of the Hughes Aircraft Co. When that company was sold in 1985 for more than $5 billion, the medical institute was suddenly one of the richest philanthropic organizations in the world. Dr. Choppin, who began as chief scientific officer, became the institute’s president in 1987.
“We have an opportunity to make a difference in biomedical research,” he told The Washington Post in 1988. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”
In some ways, the Hughes Medical Institute has come to be seen as something of a private counterpart to the National Institutes of Health. But because it is classified as a medical research organization, not a private foundation, it is prohibited by law and treasury regulations from making direct grants to researchers for specific projects.
Instead, Dr. Choppin developed what he called an “investigator program,” in which medical researchers at universities around the country are employed directly by the institute. (International researchers are funded through a separate program.) The institute also provides tens of millions of dollars a year to support science education, from elementary school to the postdoctoral level.
“Not only was Purnell a giant in the field of virology, his contributions to the entire biomedical research community are profound,” NIH director Francis S. Collins wrote in a statement. “I had the good fortune of being an HHMI investigator under his leadership, and benefited on numerous occasions from his wisdom and sage advice.”
Dr. Choppin coined the phrase “people, not projects” to describe the innovative and collaborative approach in which HHMI outfits the laboratories and pays the salaries of hundreds of “Hughes investigators” and their chief staff members. They receive seven-year contracts that can be renewed. As a result, the scientists can remain on the faculties of their respective universities without working at the institute itself.
“We bet on people who look like they are going to be winners,” Dr. Choppin told The Post. “You look for originality. How they pick a problem and stick to it. Their instinct for the scientific jugular.”
During Dr. Choppin’s 12 years as president, the number of HHMI scientists increased from 96 to 330, and the institute’s annual budget grew budget grew from $77 million to $556 million. (In 2020, the institute provided more than $650 million in research funding and another $66 million for science education programs.) HHMI researchers have worked on AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses. More than a dozen scientists associated with the institute have won the Nobel Prize.
“It really was very exciting to suddenly have the resources to support the best people we could find, wherever they were,” Dr. Choppin said in 2013. “We don’t have to uproot people. I mean the amount of investment we can make, the fact that we can support people wherever they are … that’s unusual.”
Purnell Whittington Choppin was born July 4, 1929, in Baton Rouge, La. His father was a chemistry professor at Louisiana State University, his mother a schoolteacher.
Dr. Choppin received a bachelor’s degree from LSU in 1949 and graduated from the university’s medical school in 1953. He served as an Air Force physician, primarily in Japan, from 1954 to 1956.
After an internship in St. Louis, Dr. Choppin became a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in 1957 and a full-time faculty member two years later. His arrival at Rockefeller, a university dedicated to biomedical research, coincided with an international influenza outbreak. Dr. Choppin isolated several strains of the flu virus, including one cultured from his own throat, which was widely used by other researchers.
Dr. Choppin studied how viruses attach to cells, produce infection and multiply. His research encompassed the study of measles, influenza and other viruses, including the coronavirus that led to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He found links between viruses and neurological disorders and helped develop antiviral agents to prevent infections.
He was head of the virology department at Rockefeller and held other administrative posts, including vice president for academic programs and dean of graduate studies. Dr. Choppin received numerous awards and in 1981 helped found American Society for Virology, which he later led as president.
At the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dr. Choppin oversaw the construction of a new headquarters and conference center in Chevy Chase. A separate research facility, the Janelia Research Campus, opened in Ashburn, Va., in 2006.
Survivors include his wife since 1961, the former Joan Macdonald, a nutritionist, of Washington; and their daughter, Kathleen Choppin of Manhattan.
Dr. Choppin spent a total of 14 years at the Hughes Medical Institute, including 12 as director. In all that time, he never met another HHMI employee who had met the institute’s namesake founder in person.
He often told the story of accompanying his father and brother in 1938 to a Baton Rouge airfield, where Hughes stopped to refuel during a record-setting flight around the world. Dr. Choppin recalled that Hughes, who was “very tall” and wore a white flight suit, stepped forward to shake the hand of the 9-year-old boy who would one day lead the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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