About the memorial lecture honorees:

• Gus Born (1921-2018) fled Germany in 1933 and settled in the UK, with his family, headed by his father Max Born, who in 1954 won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his “fundamental research in quantum mechanics”. As a doctor serving with the Royal Army Medical corps, Gus Born was one of the first to witness the after-effects of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. He was struck by the severe bleeding disorders seen in the survivors, which was due to lack of platelets due to radiation damage. This drove much of his later research.  He invented the light transmission aggregometer in the 1960s, transforming platelet function testing and still a key investigation for platelet function today. He did not patent the device, saying that scientific advances with medical implications should not be exploited for commercial gain.

• Rosemary Biggs (1912-2001) was a pioneering Haematologist based in Oxford. In 1952, she devised a new test, the thromboplastin generation test for detecting Haemophilia. The same year with Robert MacFarlane, she discovered factor IX that they originally names Christmas factor, after Stephen Christmas the first patient to be deficient in Factor IX. These discoveries contributed to the development of the cascade model of coagulation. In 1953, Biggs & MacFarlane wrote the first UK guidelines for treating Haemophilia. Their proposal for a national haemophilia centre that housed departments for treatment, research and blood plasma fractionation was approved in 1964. At that time three–quarters of those known to have Haemophilia were treated at Oxford. She directed the Oxford Haemophilia centre until her retirement in 1977.

• Katharine Dormandy (1926-1978) established the haemophilia service at the Royal Free Hospital in London and was known for advocating for the care of haemophiliacs. The service originally ran out of a caravan parked outside the hospital that had been donated by the Haemophilia Society. By 1970, the Haemophilia Centre expanded to utilize the veranda of an existing ward; although the caravan was still utilized. In recognition of all of her work, in 1978 a dedicated building for the care of Haemophilia was built at the Royal Free hospital, and was named the Katherine Dormandy Haemophilia Centre.

• David Weatherall (1921-2018) graduated from medical school in 1956. After house training he joined the Army for 2 years and was stationed in Singapore. There he treated the daughter of a Gurkha soldier with thalassemia, which sparked a lifelong interest in this disease. He used car batteries and filter paper for electrophoresis while he was there. Eventually he became Professor of Haematology in Liverpool and then Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine in Oxford where he led pioneering research into molecular genetics of the hemoglobinopathies and was a leading expert on the thalassaemias. While he was not a full time “clotter” his work paved the way for molecular work in thrombosis & haemostasis. In 2002, he wrote a major report on the application of genomics for global health for the World Health Organisation.