The Founder of Neurology at PGIMER

Born on 15 June 1935 in Lahore (then British India), Jagjit Singh Chopra completed his early education in Fazilka and graduated in medicine from Government Medical College, Patiala, in 1959. After a house job in India he trained in the United Kingdom at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, earning his PhD from Queen’s University for pioneering research on diabetic neuropathy. He became one of the youngest Indians to receive the FRCP (Edinburgh).

In 1968 he joined the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh as Assistant Professor of Neurology. Over the next three decades he built the Department of Neurology from the ground up—establishing clinical services, a research laboratory, and the DM training programme that produced generations of neurologists who now lead departments across India and abroad. He rose to Professor and remained Emeritus Professor after superannuation in 1995. He also served as the founding Principal of the Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh, and as President of the Indian Academy of Neurology.

A prolific writer and teacher, he edited the comprehensive volume Neurology in Tropics, drawing contributions from 146 specialists. His work earned the Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the ICMR Amrut Mody Research Award, fellowship of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, and, in 2008, the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India. The World Federation of Neurology later honoured him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Prof. Jagjit Singh Chopra passed away in Chandigarh on 18 January 2019 at the age of eighty-three. In the wards and lecture halls of PGIMER, and in the many neurologists who carry forward his standards of rigorous clinical care and research, the quiet foundation he laid continues to serve patients across the country.