Professor Eberhard Karbe was one of the initiators in 1986 to establish the "Gesellschaft für Toxikologische Pathologie" (GTP) and was chairman of the founding assembly. Since then he has served on the GTP board as secretary, chairman and finally as councilor for our journal.

Professor Karbe was also chairman of the RITA project (Registry of Industrial Toxicology Animal-data) from 1988 until 1998. Right from the beginning, the GTP had its nomenclature issues handled by GTP members in RITA, which resulted in the WHO publications "International Classification of Rodent Tumours" for the rat (1992-97) and the mouse (2001).

Together with Professor Mohr, he encouraged the journal "Experimental Pathology" to change its name to "Experimental and Toxicologic Pathology" and to become the official journal of our society. He has been member of the advisory board of the journal since 1992.

In 2001 he initiated the transition of the GTP to the European Society of Toxicologic Pathology (ESTP) and remained councilor on the ESTP board until 2002. When he decided to resign, the reason was to facilitate the election of an UK colleague as board member for this position to promote the Europeanization of the society.

Together with Professor Drommer he started in 1994 the seminar series "Classic Examples in Toxicologic Pathology" at the School of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Since then both of them have been organizers and chairmen of this annual event. These seminars turned out to be one of the most valuable and accepted training modules for toxicologic pathologists in Europe. At present, Professor Karbe is also involved in producing a CD-ROM with manuscripts and histopathologic images from the first 12 seminars, to be made available by the ESTP in 2005.

For his invaluable and driving contributions to the former GTP right from the early beginnings up to his deep personal belief in the necessity for a transition to an active European Society, the ESTP is very proud to bestow him the honorary membership. We honor herewith also a personality of high and worldwide professional experience and reputation who developed earlier than many others a global view of our fascinating working field of toxicologic pathology.

Lindau, October 2004
Wolfgang Kaufmann
ESTP Chairman