Arthur Mourant

Who was Arthur Mourant?

Arthur Ernest Mourant FRS was a British chemist, hematologist and geneticist who pioneered research into biological anthropology and its distribution, genetics, clinical and laboratory medicine, and geology.

Mourant graduated from the University of Oxford with honours in chemistry and a Doctor of Philosophy in geology in 1931. He was an early advocate of the then discredited Wegener theory of continental drift, which subsequently gained acceptabtability as plate tectonics. When he left Oxford he failed to find a position in his chosen discipline and returned to his childhood home of Jersey, where he set up a pathology laboratory.

He later studied medicine and surgery at St Bartholomew's Medical College, London, joining the Galton Laboratory Serum Unit in 1946 and then founding the Blood Group Reference Laboratory in London, where he was director for 20 years.

He pioneered a study of hematology of the worldwide distribution of blood groups. This work help build the genetic map of the world by studying and classifying blood groups across many populations and ethnic groups.