Arthur Mourant

Arthur Ernest Mourant FRS[1] (11 April 1904 – 29 August 1994) was a British chemist, hematologist and geneticist who pioneered research into biological anthropology and its distribution, genetics, clinical and laboratory medicine, and geology.

He was an early advocate of the then discredited Wegener theory of continental drift, which subsequently gained acceptability as plate tectonics.

When he left Oxford he failed to find a position in his chosen discipline and returned to his childhood home of Jersey, where he set up a pathology laboratory.

This had far-reaching effects on medicine, research into genetic diseases, blood transfusion, and public health.

Mourant also studied the new blood group antigens of the Lewis, Henshaw, Kell, and Rhesus systems, biological polymorphisms, and animal serological characteristics for fish stocks and cattle breeds.