Dr Michael Schachter: Obituary

A tribute to Dr Mike Schachter, who died unexpectedly in July 2020 at the age of 70 years.

Dr Michael Schachter was a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. Mike qualified at University College London, and after his pre-registration year he worked at the Royal Marsden Hospital and then on a registrar rotation at King’s College Hospital. From there he moved to Oxford, and the Department of Clinical Pharmacology before heading to St Mary's Hospital Medical School and Imperial in 1984.

"The first thing you recognised about Mike was the extraordinary range of his scientific knowledge" Professor Peter Sever

At Imperial, alongside his research, Mike was a Faculty Senior Tutor for the School of Medicine and postgraduate tutor for NHLI, and widely involved with the welfare of numerous students, awarded an Imperial College Teaching Fellowship and Teaching Excellence Award in 2004. He was also an honorary consultant physician at Imperial Healthcare NHS and a member of the Trust’s New Drugs Panel and Drug and Therapeutics Committee, of which he was vice-chair.

Imperial beginnings

Mike Schachter arrived in Peter Sever’s Department at St Mary’s in October 1984 with excellent scientific credentials, having undergone research into the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease with Marsden and Parks at King’s and on serotonin with David Graham-Smith in Oxford.

The first thing you recognised about Mike was the extraordinary range of his scientific knowledge. Many of his colleagues commented that they had never worked with anyone whose breadth and depth of knowledge on so many subjects was so extensive and crossed boundaries from molecular and cell biology, through to clinical trials and population science.

He spent many years nurturing a succession of PhD students in vascular biology, many of whom remained in contact throughout their professional lives. In retrospect, one of the most important contributions attributable to his group, and one which did not get the recognition it deserved, was identifying the unique behaviour of human smooth muscle cells in the pathological hyperplasia associated with stenosis of blood vessels and the underlying molecular mechanisms involved.

He will be remembered also for the vital role he played as an editor of a number of journals, including the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and the Journal of the Renin-Angiotensin Aldosterone System. He was a member of a number of ethics committees and more recently chaired a Regional Ethics Review Board.

A love of teaching

By the end of the 1990s, Mike’s attention had become increasingly diverted to one of his other great loves - teaching. Not only did he coordinate and take major responsibility for the final year course in Clinical Pharmacology, but he extended his influence through successive changes in the medical student curriculum to the oversight of one or more of the undergraduate years. His devotion to teaching in general and more specifically to the students themselves began to take on another perspective - that of mentorship and counselling. It is here that his remarkable qualities of perception, human interaction and kindness lead to a role amongst the student body that few before him had ever achieved. Generations of students were mentored and counselled by Mike. They all came to him for help and advice; even a brief look at Twitter or Facebook  provides considerable insight into the love and affection that was felt for Mike by his students.

Although a clinician by training he never pursued an active role in clinical medicine, with the exception of outpatients where, for many years before the Department moved from St Mary’s to the Hammersmith, he ran a weekly general medical clinic and a hypertension clinic. Mike was a caring and extremely knowledgeable doctor. The only problem was the patients respected and valued his care and commitment so much that they never wanted to be discharged. Combine this with Mike’s insistence that he carried on with their long-term care - his clinics grew and grew - much to the exasperation of the clinic managers!

The science, the teaching and mentorship, and the clinical care still only formed a part of the man we loved and respected. He was a gifted linguist and spoke at least six languages. Outside the workplace he was a scholarly devotee of art, poetry and of baroque music and opera. He would travel the length and breadth of Europe, often on his own, to seek out a special performance of one of his favourite operas.

A teacher well loved

Mike remained consistently dedicated to supporting medical students during their final year of undergraduate medicine. Compassionate, understanding and encouraging, Mike’s presence was unwavering at a time when the pressure could seem too great, or students might struggle with their health management or with doubts about the future. Mike gave those students  the gift of belief, never doubting that they could succeed and ensuring everything in his power was done to support them. Unburdened of their doubts, Mike’s support allowed his students to go on to graduate and have long, successful careers.  Mike’s influence on Imperial’s medical students  and the School of Medicine as a whole will remain apparent for many years to come.

Despite his extraordinary attributes and contacts throughout the world of medicine, science and the arts, and the many friends with whom he wined and dined and visited concerts and operas, he was a very private person, and one who very much kept himself to himself.

Mike will be remembered for all his marvellous qualities: his intelligence, knowledge, integrity and kindness.

His friends and colleagues will miss him dearly, and his students will be devastated by the sad loss of this remarkable man.

A musical evening in celebration of Michael’s life will take place when the situation permits. An online memorial board has been set up for those who knew Mike to share their reflections.