A personal thank you to Prof John Hodges from me – and congratulations for his #AAIC2015 lifetime achievement award

I am delighted that Prof John Hodges has been honoured in this year’s #AAIC2015.

John took a major rôle in guiding me over my own Ph.D. thesis at the University of Cambridge on the M.B./Ph.D. programme under Prof Tim Cox.

He is an unique individual in every sense.

John is a very generous man with his kindness and attention. He also has a keen interest in jazz music.

I remember chatting for a long time with John on a rather bumpy boat trip for the World Federation of Neurology in 2010 in Turkey on the Bosphorus. The event was hosted by Prof Facundo Manes, another student who trained under John, now head of department in the Institute of Cognitive Neurology in Argentina.

I went to see Prof Oliver Piquet, this year, in Sydney; who equally knows John well.

His contribution to the clinical work and academic research of frontotemporal dementia has been second to none in the world. He is extremely well respected by other specialists in this field. He, in fact, helped to train many of them.

As a personal friend, too, he has never been judgmental, and has never been equivocal in his support of me. In fact, he has been an instrumental part in me being a medical doctor in the UK jurisdiction.

I am honoured that I have been often quoted in his own academic papers. I am indeed quoted in the Foreword to the hugely popular ‘Cognitive assessment for clinicians‘. He in fact quotes my Brain paper in the chapter on dementia in the current Oxford Textbook of Medicine. Both books are published by the Oxford University Press.

The #AAIC2015 statement reads as follows:

John Hodges, M.D., Professor of Cognitive Neurology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Dr. Hodges has been a longtime researcher of cognition in the context of neurodegenerative disorders. He has authored more than 450 journal articles and five books relating to cognition and dementia. His current research focuses on frontotemporal dementia.

John’s NeuRA page is here.

John’s Foreword to my first book on dementia is as follows.

My second book on dementia is being published tomorrow, “Living better with dementia: good practice and innovation for the future“.

Finally, I admire John’s interest in jazz.

On advising me about an outlook of life, he once told me, “Just remember Shibley,  if he you get hit by a bus, there’ll always be someone to take your place professionally.” Of course John meant this nicely – I think John meant that the vast majority of us aren’t as disposable as we would like to think.

I have never forgotten these words. Indeed, my life’s philosophy is actively guided by them.