Garth Cooper

Garth James Smith Cooper is a New Zealand academic biochemist, and as of 2021 is a full professor at the University of Auckland.

Early life Cooper is of Pākehā (European) and Ngāti Māhanga Māori descent. He speaks English, but not Māori, as his Māori grandmother thought he should learn English. He received schooling in New Zealand.

Career Cooper worked as a medical officer in Rotorua in 1979 and 1980, then in Auckland from 1981 to 1985, including several years based in Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland. He and David Scott pioneered a programme for a new approach to health care delivery in Ōtara from 1983 to 1985. He wrote and delivered the first course in New Zealand for lay community health workers, which was recognised by the Mayor of South Auckland (1985). The programme was developed at the Whaiora Marae in Ōtara, where Cooper worked part-time.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1998 He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree by the University of Oxford in 2017, based on his more than 200 publications, mainly in the field of diabetes and metabolic disease.

Cooper was involved in the Listener letter on science controversy in 2021, as one of the signatories to the initial letter. He and two other signatories, who were Royal Society fellows, were investigated by the Royal Society. In response, the Free Speech Union started a fund to support Cooper and another one of the fellows.

Selected works Xu, A., Wang, Y., Keshaw, H., Xu, L.Y., Lam, K.S. and Cooper, G.J., 2003. The fat-derived hormone adiponectin alleviates alcoholic and nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases in mice. The Journal of clinical investigation, 112(1), pp. 91–100. Cooper, G.J., Willis, A.C., Clark, A., Turner, R.C., Sim, R.B. and Reid, K.B., 1987. Purification and characterization of a peptide from amyloid-rich pancreases of type 2 diabetic patients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 84(23), pp. 8628–8632. Clark, A., Wells, C.A., Buley, I.D., Cruickshank, J.K., Vanhegan, R.I., Matthews, D.R., Cooper, G.J., Holman, R.R. and Turner, R.C., 1988. Islet amyloid, increased A-cells, reduced B-cells and exocrine fibrosis: quantitative changes in the pancreas in type 2 diabetes. Diabetes research (Edinburgh, Scotland), 9(4), pp. 151–159. Leighton, B. and Cooper, G.J., 1988. Pancreatic amylin and calcitonin gene-related peptide cause resistance to insulin in skeletal muscle in vitro. Nature, 335(6191), pp. 632–635.