Rune Grubb 1920-1998.

Accessible online at: http://BioMedNet.com/karger Professor Rune Grubb died on August 20, 1998, in Lund, Sweden. He was born on May 22, 1920, in Växjö, Sweden, the son of Rut and Eric Grubb, both physicians. He grew up in Växjö in the woodland of county Småland, an area he returned to all his life for reflection and recreation. He got his medical education at Lund University and partly also at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and received his licence as a physician in Lund in 1946. As a young student Rune Grubb started scientific work at the Institute of Bacteriology, Lund University. Immediately after the war, in 1945, he moved to the State Serum Institute, Copenhagen as a guest scientist, and for a more extended period to the Lister Institute, London, where he collaborated among others with W.T.J. Morgan and A.E. Mourant. During the Lister Institute period he produced a number of now classical papers in blood group genetics [1–4], delineating the systematics of the Lewis blood groups and their relation to ABO and secretor groups. This work has been fundamental to our understanding of these important blood group systems. Back in Sweden he presented his PhD thesis, ‘Some Aspects of the Complexity of the Human ABO Blood Groups’, in Lund in 1949. This area, immunogenetics and genetic markers of the individual, remained in the center of his scientific interest for the rest of his life. Following graduation he took up a position as Assistant Professor and later as Associate Professor of Bacteriology at Lund University (1949–1959).