Henry “Hank” Nordhoff, who served as CEO for 15 years at San Diego-based Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GPRO]]) is retiring as chairman at the San Diego maker of biomedical diagnostic products, according to a statement from the company today.
Nordhoff, 69, joined Gen-Probe as CEO in 1994, about two years after the company was spun out from Japan’s Chugai Pharmaceuticals and became a public company. Thomas Adams and Howard Birndorf, who had founded Hybritech, the fount of San Diego’s biotech industry, founded Gen-Probe with David Khone in 1983. Gen-Probe developed the first DNA-based diagnostic test to win FDA approval (in 1985). Chugai acquired the company for $110 million in 1989.
Under Nordhoff, Gen-Probe developed an assortment of molecular diagnostic tests for clinical use. Today the company’s diagnostic products and services are used to diagnose a variety of human diseases and to screen donated blood and organs designated for transplantation. Nordhoff retired as CEO in 2009—he was succeeded by Carl Hull—but has continued to serve as board chairman.
Under an agreement with the company, Nordhoff will serve as a consultant to Gen-Probe’s board for a year following his official departure at the end of December.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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