Robin Coombs

Texte anglais à traduire :
He was born in London and studied veterinary medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1943 he commenced work on a doctorate at Cambridge University, where he continued to work until 1988[1]. Already before obtaining his doctorate in 1947 he had described the antiglobulin test that would bear his name.

He became a professor and researcher at the Department of Pathology of University of Cambridge, and a founder of its Division of Immunology.

He received honorary doctoral degress by the University of Guelph, Canada, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom (1965), a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and a Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He was married to Anne Blomfield, his first graduate student. They had a son and a daughter[1].

Texte anglais à traduire :
His first discovery was the test now referred to as the Coombs test, which according to the legend he first devised while travelling on the train[1], and developed and published together with Dr Arthur Mourant and Dr Rob Race[2]. It has formed the base of a large number of laboratory investigations in the fields of hematology and immunology[3].

Together with Professor Philip George Howthern Gell, he developed a classification of immune mechanisms of tissue injury, now known as the "Gell-Coombs classification", comprising four types of reactions[4].

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[5]