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Archival description
GB 0120 PP/KEK · 1920-2002

Papers of Ralph Ambrose Kekwick, 1920-2002. The collection is dominated by very comprehensive documentation of Kekwick's research. Section A, Biographical, is not extensive. It includes a copy of the Royal Society biographical memoir, some material from Kekwick's education including a bound set of school reports from the Leyton County High School for Boys which indicate his early academic distinction. There is a small amount of correspondence and papers relating to scientific colleagues of Kekwick, including R.K. Cannan and C.S. Sherrington. the section concludes with a sequence of photographs from a mounted photograph of Kekwick and F.G.Young as graduates in 1929 to 1971 photographs probably from Kekwick's retirement party. Section B, Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, presents very modest documentation of Kekwick's long association with this Institute. The bulk of the material relates to the celebrations of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Institute.

Section C, Research, is the largest in the collection. It presents comprehensive documentation of Kekwick's research over six decades, from earliest postgraduate study in 1929 right up to retirement in 1971 and beyond. The section is divided into four. There are research notebooks 1929-1971 which include early work at University College London, the periods spent in the US in 1931-1933 and working with T. Svedberg in Sweden in 1935, and wartime and ongoing postwar research. There are extensive research notes, mostly dating from the mid 1930s to the early 1970s, found in Kekwick's folders and boxfiles which may include data from ultracentrifuge and electrophoresis tests (including photographic data), notes, graphs, calculations, correspondence and drafts of publications. There are also papers and photographs of research equipment, instructional notebooks and graphs. Section D, Publications and lectures, is very patchy in its coverage. Publications material includes a few drafts of publications, inclusing two 1935 papers with R.K. Cannan and his memoirs of Sir Lana Drury for the Royal Society biographical memoir and the Dictionary of National Biography. There is also a set of Kekwick's offprints. Lectures material includes a sequence of public and invitation lectures from 1947 to the late 1960s. These report on Kekwick's work in progress and its signficance. Section E, Societies and organisations, principally documents Kekwick's association with the Medical Research Council: the largest component of the section is papers of MRC's Blood Transfusion Research Committee, on which Kekwick served from 1948 to 1978. There is also documentation of the Albumin Working Party of the World Health Organisation's International Committee for Standardisation in Haematology on which Kekwick served from 1970.

Kekwick , Ralph Ambrose , b 1908 , biophysicist and pioneer in blood plasma research