Catalogue description Medical Research Council: Blood Group Unit: Reports and Papers

The Blood Group Unit was set up in 1935 as the Serum Unit (financed through the Medical Research Council (MRC) by the Rockefeller Foundation), under the direction of Professor (later Sir) Ronald Fisher. It was based at University College, London. During the Second World War, it was re-located to Cambridge. In 1946, the Unit was reconstituted at the Lister Institute as the Blood Group Research Unit, under the directorship of Dr Robert Race.

From 1946 the Unit acquired an international reputation in the highly specialised field of haematology, extending its work in 1965 into the genetics of blood groups. Upon the retirement of Dr Race in 1972, Dr Ruth Sanger became director of the Unit. Under Dr Sanger's direction, the Unit continued to make a unique contribution to the identification of blood groups, and to the applications of the blood group systems to the problems of human genetics. In 1983, upon the retirement of Dr Sanger, Dr Patricia Tippett became director.

The MRC Blood Group Unit occupied premises at University College, London until it was disbanded in September 1995; its work continues in other research centres.