Dr. Nani Ghoshal was my anatomy professor during my freshman year of veterinary school. I bring his name up because he retired recently from Iowa State University. We are taught by all of our professors and inspired by some as well. Dr. Ghoshal’s inspiration for me involved his incredible dedication to the students in our profession. It would be hard to talk to a graduate of Iowa State’s veterinary school over the last 45 years and not have them tell a Nani Ghoshal story.
Mine is pretty simple. He was probably the smartest man with the most photographic memory I have ever met. As a native of India, he was a little hard to understand. Many of us who were just beginning our tenure at Iowa State were already intimidated by Dr. Ghoshal. None of us wanted to repeat a question if we didn’t understand him. The fortunate thing was that his memory was remarkable. At the time he was the editor of a two volume textbook of veterinary anatomy. These two volumes encompassed over two thousand pages. Dr. Ghoshal knew he was hard to understand so in answer each question he would give you a page number. On that page (out of 2,000) you would find the answer to your question. Thousands of questions were asked that year and he was never wrong on the page number.
When he retired he told the current Dean of the veterinary school that he would be happy to come back and help if needed. He would request no pay, just a key to the building.
We are a clinical teaching site for the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University. As such, we have students in our hospital much of the year. I often think of Dr. Ghoshal and how he influenced all of us at the beginning of our career. I hope I can offer some of the same positive influence to our students in memory of a truly gifted professor.