Geoffrey Tovey

Geoffrey Harold Tovey CBE FRCP FRCPath (29 May 1916 – 19 December 2001) was a doctor whose scientific contributions in the field of haematology brought him an international reputation. He was also an expert in serology and founder and Director of the UK Transplant Service.

Geoffrey Harold Tovey was born on 29 May 1916 at Midsomer Norton, Somerset. His mother died of acute pneumonia when Geoffrey was a child. After his mother's death, he attended Wycliffe College school, then Bristol University.

For a short while he worked as a GP in Bristol. He was then appointed House Physician at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, where he met his wife Margaret, a nurse. During the Second World War, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted to the Army Blood Transfusion Service from 1941 to 1946, headed by haematologist Brigadier General L E H Whitby (from New Year 1945 as Brigadier General Sir Lionel Whitby) at Southmead Hospital, Bristol and helped in training RAMC privates at Clifton College as Blood Transfusion Orderlies (including J D R Thomas later famed for ion-selective electrodes that came to be used in blood electrolyte analysis - from 1994 Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Cardiff University, whom Dr Tovey telephoned soon after being written to about his letter in The Daily Telegraph of 15 April 1998 on "New blood won't revive Service"); in 1945-46 Tovey had command of No.3 Base Transfusion Unit in Poona, India Command. After the war Dr Geoffrey Tovey returned to the Blood Transfusion Service unit in 1946 at Southmead Hospital, Bristol. In that year he was appointed Director of the South West Regional Blood Transfusion Service. It was in the evening of J D R Thomas's Cardiff marriage on 23 September 1950 that he went with his new wife Gwyneth from Bristol's Royal Hotel to the Reunion at Southmead Hospital of the wartime Blood Transfusion Unit, where they met several former colleagues who'd joined Dr Geoffrey Tovey's staff at the South West Regional Blood Transfusion Service. Dr Tovey held the post of Director from 1946 to 1978

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