Gerald L. Van Hoosier, Jr., is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Van Hoosier graduated from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University at College Station, Texas, in 1957 and subsequently obtained postdoctoral training in virology and epidemiology at Berkeley, California, and in pathology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. From 1957 to 1962, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service assigned to the biologics program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he focused on the development and safety evaluation of poliomyelitis and measles vaccines. Following 5 years in the Public Health Service, Dr. Van Hoosier joined the faculty of the Division of Experimental Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and did research on the role of viruses in the etiology of cancer. In 1969, he moved to Pullman, Washington, where he was a faculty member in the Department of Veterinary Pathology in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Director of Laboratory Animal Resources at Washington State University. He introduced a course on laboratory animals into the third year of the veterinary school curriculum, taught a graduate course on the pathology of laboratory animals, and began the development of a series of audio tutorials in collaboration with the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine. In 1975, Dr. Van Hoosier was invited to develop an experimental animal program at the University of Washington. He obtained a training grant for veterinarians from the National Institutes of Health and established the Department of Comparative Medicine, which offers a Master’s degree. He served as the department chairman and attending veterinarian until 1995.
After becoming a Diplomate of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine in 1968, he served as President in 1977–1978. Other professional activities have included serving as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care in 1981–1982, President of the American Association of Laboratory Animal Science in 1992, and a member of the Governing Board of the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science from 1995 to 1999. In addition to approximately 100 scientific papers, Dr. Van Hoosier was a coeditor of Laboratory Hamsters, one of a series of texts by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine, and served as editor of Laboratory Animal Science from 1995 to 1999. He is currently a member of the Editorial Council of the Baltic Journal of Laboratory Animal Science and Animales de Experimentacion. He is the recipient of the Griffin Award from the American Association of Laboratory Animal Science and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University