While studying medicine at the University of Sheffield he suffered from a detached retina, which meant he was exempted from military conscription, and had a lifelong preference for monocular microscopes.
[5] He was also appointed as head of the Division of Communicable Diseases in 1967 and then deputy director of the MRC's Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, Middlesex, in 1970, while still attached to CCU.
[3] The Clinical Research Centre was closed in 1984 following which Tyrrell returned full time at CCU in 1985, and remained there until its official closure in 1990.
The specimen designated B814 when experimented on healthy volunteers was highly contagious and produced the symptoms of cold within a few days.
Returning from a visit to the Lund University in Sweden in 1965, Andrewes told Tyrrell that there was a young Swedish surgeon who was able to grow complex viruses.
In 1966, June Dalziel Almeida had just joined as an electron microscopist at the St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London.
Tyrrell sent her the specimen, including one new human virus called 229E, which was recently discovered by Dorothy Hamre and John J. Procknow at the University of Chicago.
Almeida and Tyrrell reported in the April 1967 issue of the Journal of General Virology, writing: "Probably the most interesting finding from these experiments was that two human respiratory viruses, 229 E and B814 are morphologically identical with avian infectious bronchitis.
He presented his findings at the second International Congress on Poliomyelitis in Copenhagen on 3–7 September 1951,[2] and published in The Lancet at the end of the year.
They discovered that the virus is the causative agent of erythematous rash illness and temporary stoppage of blood formation in persons with chronic haemolytic anaemia.
[26][27] Tyrrell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970, and was appointed Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) in 1980.