Catalogue description Records of the Research Units of the Medical Research Council

The earliest research unit of the Medical Research Council was the Department of Clinical Research (1916-1974), attached for most of its life to University College Hospital Medical School, London. University College London also housed the Blood Group Unit which made a unique contribution to haematology, including the identification of blood groups, and investigations into blood group systems in the field of human genetics.

In the 1970s, there were over a hundred units, each with its own specialized field of research, and usually attached to a university or hospital. At present, there are over forty research units, scattered throughout the UK, along with Medical Research Council laboratories in Jamaica and the Gambia. Only a handful date from before the Second World War.

Prior to 1968 the names of Medical Research Council's external research units tend to appear in the form Cellular Immunology Research Unit. From 1968 Research is dropped and MRC is prefixed to the unit's name. A small number of research units are or have been run in collaboration with other bodies - as in the case of the MRC/Economic and Social Research Council's Social and Applied Psychology Unit at the University of Sheffield.