Charles Richard Drew

Charles Richard Drew was an American surgeon and medical researcher whose doctoral work showed that blood plasma, separated from whole blood cells, could be preserved far longer than whole blood, making large-scale blood banking practical. He directed the Blood for Britain program in 1940, organizing the collection and shipment of plasma to British forces before the United States entered the Second World War, and he became the first director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank in 1941, where refrigerated mobile collection units he helped develop, later called bloodmobiles, greatly expanded blood donation. He resigned from the Red Cross in protest of its policy of racially segregating blood donations, a practice he held to have no scientific basis, and he remained an outspoken critic of segregation in blood banking for the rest of his career.