Robin Coombs

Short abstract

Immunologist who devised the Coombs test

Shortly after the discovery of rhesus antibodies in blood, Robin Coombs devised the classic, gold standard test that bears his name. It diagnoses autoimmune haemolytic anaemia and haemolytic disease in rhesus positive babies of rhesus negative mothers. It is also used in cross matching to detect rhesus incompatible blood. These conditions have one thing in common—the production of antibodies that damage red cells, but which were virtually impossible to detect using standard tests of red cell agglutination, although no one knew why.

One day, sitting in a badly lit wartime train returning to Cambridge from London, Coombs had a “eureka” moment while reflecting on this. He deduced that if a second, “bridging” reagent was added, this could make red cells aggregate and, if so, this would form the basis of a diagnostic test.

Along with his colleagues Arthur Mourant and Rob Race, Coombs conducted a series of spectacularly successfully experiments that confirmed that the method worked. They published the method and its application to various diseases in the Lancet in 1945 and the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1946.

Coombs was instrumental in setting up the British Society of Immunology and his work had a huge international impact. His textbook Clinical Aspects of Immunology (1963), written with Philip Gell, contained his famous classification of allergic reactions, adopted worldwide. The book remained in print for over 30 years and ran to five editions.

Robin Coombs was born in London and brought up in Cape Town, South Africa. He trained as a vet in Glasgow, qualifying in 1945. He spent a few months at the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Weybridge, where he invented a diagnostic test for glanders, a serious disease of horses and donkeys. In 1947 he went to Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his life, retiring as emeritus professor of immunology.

He leaves a wife, Anne, and two children.

Robert Royston Amos Coombs, emeritus professor of immunology Cambridge University (b London 1921), d 25 February 2006.