Peter Alfred Gorer
FRS (14 April 1907 (London)–1961) was a British immunologist, pathologist and geneticist who pioneered the field of
transplant immunology.
Peter Gorer was born in London to Edgar (drowned in the 1915 sinking of
RMS Lusitania) and Rachel née Cohen Gorer.
He died of
lung cancer in 1961.
Education and work institutions
He was educated at
Charterhouse. He graduated from
Guy's Hospital, London
Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre.
I ...
in 1929 and then studied genetics under
J.B.S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...
at
University College, London.
From 1933 to 1940 Gorer worked at the
Lister Institute before returning to Guy's Hospital to work as a pathologist.
Research
Gorer is credited with the co-discovery of
histocompatibility antigens
Histocompatibility, or tissue compatibility, is the property of having the same, or sufficiently similar, alleles of a set of genes called human leukocyte antigens (HLA), or major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Each individual expresses many uni ...
and the elucidation of their
genetic regulation
Regulation of gene expression, or gene regulation, includes a wide range of mechanisms that are used by cells to increase or decrease the production of specific gene products (protein or RNA). Sophisticated programs of gene expression are wide ...
. Together with
George Snell, he helped discover the murine histocompatibility 2 locus, or H-2, which is analogous to the
human leukocyte antigen.
Gorer also identified antigen II and determined its role in
transplant tissue rejection.
[
]
Awards
*Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960.William B. Coley Award
The William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology is presented annually by the Cancer Research Institute, to scientists who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of basic and tumor immunology and whose w ...
See also
*C.C. Little
Clarence Cook Little (October 6, 1888 – December 22, 1971) was an American genetics, cancer, and tobacco researcher and academic administrator, as well as a eugenicist.
Early life
C. C. Little was born in Brookline, Massachusetts and attend ...
*Major histocompatibility complex
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a large locus on vertebrate DNA containing a set of closely linked polymorphic genes that code for cell surface proteins essential for the adaptive immune system. These cell surface proteins are calle ...
References
1907 births
1961 deaths
People educated at Charterhouse School
Alumni of University College London
Physicians of Guy's Hospital
English geneticists
British immunologists
Deaths from lung cancer
Fellows of the Royal Society
20th-century British medical doctors
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