- Robin Coombs
Robert Royston Amos ("Robin") Coombs, (
January 9 1921 –February 25 2006 ), was a British immunologist, co-discoverer of theCoombs test (1945) used for detecting antibodies in various clinical scenarios, such asRh disease andblood transfusion .Biography
He was born in
London and studiedveterinary medicine atEdinburgh University . In 1943 he went up toKing's College, Cambridge where he commenced work on a doctorate, which he gained in 1947. Before finishing his doctorate, he developed and published methods to detect antibodies with Dr Arthur Mourant and Dr Rob Race in 1945.cite journal | author=Coombs RRA, Mourant AE, Race RR | title=Detection of weak and "incomplete" Rh agglutinins: a new test | journal=Lancet | year=1945 | volume=246| pages=15–6 | doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(45)90806-3] . This, his first discovery is the test now referred to as theCoombs test , which according to the legend he first devised while travelling on the train.cite journal | author=Pincock S | title=Robert Royston Amos (Robin) Coombs | journal=Lancet | year=2006 | volume=367 | pages=1234 | doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68528-0]Coombs became a professor and researcher at the Department of Pathology of
University of Cambridge , becoming a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and a founder of its Division of Immunology. He was appointed the fourthQuick Professor of Biology in 1966 and continued to work at Cambridge University until 1988He received honorary doctoral degrees by the
University of Guelph ,Canada , and theUniversity of Edinburgh ,Scotland and was aFellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom (1965), a Fellow of theRoyal College of Pathologists and an Honorary Fellow of theRoyal College of Physicians .He was married to Anne Blomfield, his first graduate student. They had a son and a daughter.
Works
The
Coombs test , which he developed and published together with Dr Arthur Mourant and Dr Rob Race in 1945, has formed the base of a large number of laboratory investigations in the fields of hematology and immunologycite journal | author=Coombs RR | title=Historical note: past, present and future of the antiglobulin test | journal=Vox Sang | year=1998| volume=74 | pages=67–73 | pmid=9501403 | doi=10.1159/000030908] .Together with Professor
Philip George Howthern Gell , he developed a classification of immune mechanisms of tissueinjury , now known as the "Gell-Coombs classification ", comprising four types of reactionscite book | author=Gell PGH, Coombs RRA | title=Clinical Aspects of Immunology | location= London| publisher=Blackwell| year=1963] .Together with W.E. Parish and A.F. Wells he put forward an explanation of
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) as an anaphylactic reaction to dairy proteins.cite book | author=Coombs RRA, Parish WE, Walls AF | title=Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Could a healthy infant succumb to inhalation-anaphylaxis during sleep leading to cot death? | publisher=Cambridge Publications Ltd | year= 2000 | isbn=0-9540081-0-3]References
External links
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article349469.ece The Independent] 6 March 2006
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27coombs.html New York Times]
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