Professor Abdool Moossa
Alumna, Physiology, Surgery (Medicine), XXXX
Honorary Graduate, Doctor of Medicine, 1990
Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of California San Diego.
Welcome by the Public Orator
Mr Vice Chancellor,
In very few decades there appears an undergraduate of such prodigious talent that teachers may be taught and professors professed to. Abdool Rahim Moossa was such a student. He came to our University to exhibit such unparalleled precocity that we might speculate that even in infancy he had burbled anatomy and lisped physiology. However that may be, he came to be known affectionately as Babs Moossa and that is how he is addressed even today in the operating theatres of the world. Throughout his studentship he swept up medals and prizes on such a scale as to risk critical examination by the Monopolies Commission. He gained distinctions in every conceivable subject, pausing only for a year to gain a first class honours degree in physiology, the result of a research project in gastric secretion.
Today he stands before you radiating the high meridian refulgence of his outstanding career in surgery, the fulfilment of that youthful promise.
Babs Moossa was born on the silver-stranded island of Mauritius and his early education took him to Paris. He returned to college in Mauritius and eventually – the French Government of the time showing wholly exceptional sagacity – he received a prestigious award giving him the opportunity to pursue his medical studies in any country of his choice.
High intelligence is not always allied to sound judgement. The youthful Moossa exhibited both, for not only did he choose to come to Britain but, a mark of infallible discrimination and good taste, all of the British schools it was the Liverpool Medical School that he chose to attend. It was here that he received his training in surgery, the prelude to a career which has taken him through the great medical schools of John Hopkins and Chicago to his present post as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Diego.
His original researches have incalculably advanced the treatment of cancer of the pancreas. He has brought hope to many when the way it seemed forever closed. His work is marked by high diagnostic accuracy and by great manual dexterity. The complexities of his branch of surgery require consummate team-work both in the theatre and in recovery. Professor Moossa is the impeccable leader. Technically expert and cool in judgement he understands and motivates the members of his team all the way down the line.
He has committed his vast expertise to print in major classical texts, as professionally profound as they are physically massive. He has enabled many young surgeons of high promise to benefit from his rich experience and he has travelled tirelessly to Visiting Professors in Cardiff and Kansas, in Michigan and Madrid, in Rome and Rosario. His sphere of influence in the globe itself. The laws of thermodynamics forbid perpetual motion but since they are not included in the medical curriculum Professor Moossa takes no notice of them. He has known to lecture in Edinburgh and Tokyo on successive days and to make a return trip from San Diego to Copenhagen to spend four hours there to give a single lecture. He requires four personal secretaries to keep track of his writings and his diary.
Nor does he neglect his undergraduate students. He nurses with unquenchable optimism the belief that medical students can become educated persons. Generations of students have found his teaching agreeably analgesic; far from anaesthetizing them he had awakened their excitement by his own enthusiasm.
He brings the same passionate energy to his reactions, which include football – when he played in earlier years his chief quality, it appears, was his enthusiasm – and horse-racing. Extraordinarily he was recently seen in the same place on three successive days – the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, appraising the thoroughbreds of the racing world.
Abdool Moossa is one of the most eminent of living surgeons, as bold in conception as he is meticulous in performance. His reputation stands on the firmest of foundations – the opinion of those who are qualified by their own attainments to discern a master in their own profession and to recognise him by major awards and distinctions. He has been for example, Hunterian Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, itself a form of canonisation.
World authority as he is. Professor Moossa retains his strong affection for this University. He comes regularly to examine our students and he has welcomed to San Diego an exceptional number of Liverpool graduates as Senior Surgical Fellows. There is further definitive evidence of his affinity with Liverpool – his house in San Diego bears the name “Anfield”.
It is with gratitude and admiration that we now bring this distinguished son of the University into our roll of honorary graduates.
MY LORD AND CHANCELLOR in the name of the Senate and of the Council, I present to you ABDOOL MOOSSA, for admission to the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, honoris causa, in this University.