| Authorised form of name | Humphrey; John Herbert (1915 - 1987); immunologist; medical scientist |
| Dates | 1915 - 1987 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | West Byfleet, Surrey, England, United Kingdom |
| Date of birth | 16 December 1915 |
| Place of death | Ducklake House, his country home in Ashwell, near Baldock, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | 25 December 1987 |
| Occupation | Immunologist and medical scientist |
| Research field | Immunopathology |
| Medicine |
| Clinical immunology |
| Immunology |
| Activity | Education:
International School, Lausanne, Switzerland; Bramcote preparatory school, Yorkshire; Winchester College; Trinity College, Cambridge BA Cantab(1931); University College Hospital medical school, London (UCHMS) MB, BChir (1940) MD (1947)
Career:
His first clinical appointment at the British Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, was interrupted by a bout of bronchitis which transpired to be tuberculosis and following recovery he was Jenner research fellow at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, Stanmore, Middlesex, carrying out microbiological studies (1941-2); assistant pathologist at the Central Middlesex Hospital (1942); obtained an external Medical Research Council appointment in microbiology at UCHMS to work on bacterial enzymes (1946); joined the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Hampstead (later at Mill Hill) as a member of the scientific staff in the division of biological standards(1949); deputy director of a newly founded immunology department at NIMR (1961-1976); Member of Governing Body, Winchester College (1967-1979); chair of immunology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith (1961-1981).
Honours:
CBE 1970
Memberships:
FRCP
American Association of Immunologists
Institute of Biology
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American National Academy of Sciences
Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 21/03/1963 |
| Age at election | 47 |
| Proposer | Robert Russell Race |
| John Davidson |
| Peter Alfred Gorer |
| Peter Brian Medawar |
| Arthur Wormall |
| Walter Thomas James Morgan |
| Richard Laurence Millington Synge |
| Alan Watt Downie |
| Norman Wingate Pirie |
| Albert Neuberger |
| Alan Nigel Drury |
| Samuel Phillips Bedson |
| Christopher Howard Andrewes |
| Rosaling Pitt-Rivers |
| Gordon Roy Cameron |
| Wilson Smith |
| Charles Robert Harrington |
| Relationships | Parents: Herbert Alfred Humphrey (1868–1951), inventor and co-founder of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) at Billingham, co. Durham, and Mary Elizabeth Horniblow.
Spouse: (m. 1939) Janet Rumney, daughter of Professor Archibald Vivian Hill CH FRS, Nobel laureate in physiology, and Margaret Neville, née Keynes.
Children: Two sons and three daughters. |
| PublishedWorks | RCN 19088
RCN 19089 |
| OtherInfo | Remembered for his outstanding studies of antibody synthesis.
By experiments in vivo (underlined) and in vivo (underlined), with the skiful application of isotopic labelling techniques, he has revealed new and precise information of great importance regarding the sites and rates of antibody production and the part played by the various antibody-forming tissues at different stages of the immunisation process.
Made advances in the study of analphylaxis and delayed hypersensitivity.
Carried oit studies on hyaluronidase, development of a theory of the plate assay of antibiotics and its application to standardisation problems, analysis of Arthus reactions, and studies of the biochemistry of plasma proteins.
Alongside science, he passionately pursued his concern for many socio-political issues, becoming founder member of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War and the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons, president of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (from 1978), and a supporter of Pugwash (a group of international scientists dedicated to preventing nuclear war). |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Related images | Discover a selection of related images in our picture library |
| Image | 
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| Source | DNB
Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1990 vol 36 pp 273-300, plate, by Brigitte A Askonas
References:
A F Bristow, T Barrowcliffe and D R Bangham, 'Standardization of biological medicines: the first hundred years, 1900-2000' in NR 2006 vol 60 pp 271-289 |
| Code | NA991 |