Christopher Andrewes

Sir Christopher Howard Andrewes (1896 to 1988) was a British medical virologist who spent most of his working life in full-time research on the staff of the Medical Research Council. Born in London, the son of the pathologist Sir Frederick Andrewes, he studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital and worked for a time at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital in New York. At the National Institute for Medical Research he became head of the division of virology and bacteriology and later its deputy director. In 1933 he, together with Wilson Smith and Patrick Laidlaw, discovered the human influenza A virus, and he went on to follow the spread of new influenza strains around the world through the World Influenza Centre in his department. In 1946 he founded the Common Cold Unit near Salisbury, where volunteer trials gave the first steps toward culturing and identifying the viruses behind colds. He also contributed to the grouping and naming of viruses, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1939 and was knighted in 1961.