Head of Programme Wellcome Sanger Institute Cambridge, United Kingdom
About the memorial lecture honoree: 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.