Avrion Mitchison

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Avrion Mitchison
Born(1928-05-05)5 May 1928
Died28 December 2022(2022-12-28) (aged 94)
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
SpouseLorna Margaret Martin
Children5, including Tim Mitchison
Parents
RelativesDenis Mitchison (brother)
Murdoch Mitchison (brother)
John Scott Haldane (grandfather)
J. B. S. Haldane (uncle)
Awards
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity College London
Doctoral advisorPeter Medawar

(Nicholas) Avrion Mitchison

zoologist and immunologist.[1][2]

Biography

Mitchison was born in 1928, the son of the Labour politician

physiologist John Scott Haldane.[2] His elder brothers are the bacteriologist Denis Mitchison and the zoologist Murdoch Mitchison
.

He was married to Lorna Margaret Martin, daughter of Maj-Gen

John Simson Stuart Martin, CSI. They have five children, Tim, Matthew, Mary, Hannah and Ellen.[2] Two are cell biologists Tim Mitchison
and Hannah M. Mitchison.

He was educated at

J.B.S. Haldane
taught, at the National Institute of Medical Research at Mill Hill and as founding Director of the German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin (DRFZ) in Germany. He was a Professor Emeritus at University College London.

Mitchison died on 28 December 2022, at the age of 94.[2]

Mitchison's contributions to immunology include the discovery of both low dose and high dose tolerance for a single antigen,

clonal selection theory, but which can be understood in the context of immune network theory. He was also a founder member of the British Society for Immunology alongside John H. Humphrey, Bob White, and Robin Coombs
.

Research

Mitchison discovered the transference of

immunity by sensitised cells, thereby providing evidence relating transplantation immunity to hypersensitivity reactions of the 'delayed' type. He devised a method for revealing mixtures of cells of different genotypes in vivo and used it to be equal first in demonstrating that the 'radiation recovery factor' is a graft of living cells and not a humoral agent. He carried out the most exact quantitative analysis of tolerance hitherto attempted in a cellular system and proved that persistence of tolerance depends on persistence of antigen.[4]

Awards and honours

Mitchison was elected a

Weizmann Institute and in 1995 was awarded the Novartis Prize for Basic Immunology
.

Avrion Mitchison Prize for Rheumatology

In honor of its Founding Director, the Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), a Leibniz Institute, annually awards the Avrion Mitchison Prize to young scientists contributing significantly to understanding and treating rheumatic diseases. Donated by the Ernst Schering Foundation until 2018, the prize is now awarded by the DRFZ. The prize money is 3,000 Euros.

References

  1. ^ "MITCHISON, Prof. (Nicholas) Avrion". Who's Who. Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c d "Avrion Mitchison (1928–2022)". Nature. Retrieved 23 March 2023.
  3. S2CID 40531718
    .
  4. ^ a b "Nicholas Mitchison". London: Royal Society. One or more of the preceding sentences may incorporate text from the royalsociety.org website where "all text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.""Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 20 February 2016. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)

External links

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