How I met Emeritus Professor Goodfellow – Akinropo

By Isa Isawade

UK-based author of the popular novel SCARS DO HEAL, Kayode Joseph Akinropo, has narrated on his Facebook page how he met Emeritus Professor Michael Goodfellow (OBE).

Goodfellow, a British professor in microbial systematics, specialising in Actinomycetota taxonomy was head of the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the chairman of Bergey’s Manual Trust.

According to Akinropo, “We met in March this year at a conference in the North East of England to which we were both invited.

“When the first session of the conference ended at noon, we went for an hour’s lunch break. It’s serve yourself and we all did justice to the sumptuous meals.

“At my table were three other conference attendees, Prof included. We introduced ourselves to one another as we were eating.

“After I introduced myself, Prof asked me more questions to find out all I was doing for a living. I told him and others more about myself and the one that interested him most as you’d expect was that I was a published author.

“He told me so many things about PhD students from many parts of the world he’d supervised and why the university couldn’t let him go! He asked where he could buy my novel.”

The amiable author said Prof  Goodfellow was very happy to see the novel and “immediately bought one autographed copy above the selling price and told others why everyone needed to buy a copy each and read.

“I showed him my social media pages and why I promote my literary work there. He gave me kudos for doing that and agreed when I asked him to take pictures with me for more promo! How glad I was when he said ‘Yes!’

“After our lunch break, we went to different subgroups to discuss allocated topics. We found ourselves in the same room!

“One contributor said something in the room. To support the speaker, Prof brought out my novel he’d bought and introduced me to them as the author. He said from the little he’d heard from me and reviews he’d read online, my novel was relevant to our discussion in order to balance some equations the conference was there to resolve.

“The group leader asked if I still got some copies. Unfortunately, I didn’t go with many copies that day. But I was happy they bought the few copies I went with. They took flyers away to be given to others and some of them promised to buy their copies on Amazon!”

The Nigeria born author, therefore, expressed his profound gratitude to the highly revered professor for what he called the honour granted him.

He ended the narration of the remarkable encounter with an indelible quote from the Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon which goes thus: “Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.”