Ethel Bidwell (12 July 1919 – 23 October 2003) was a British research scientist who investigated blood coagulation.

In 1950, Bidwell, an enzyme chemist, joined the Oxford University team headed by Gwyn Macfarlane.

Two years later, she began to study plasma concentration and selective extraction of factor VIII.

[1] By 1953, she had devised a technique to extract and concentrate bovine factor VIII that was 8000 times stronger than human plasma.

But I knew, from reading the journals of the time and from a casual conversation with a haematologist friend that she was the person who, in the 1950s, had discovered factor VIII, the first reliable treatment for haemophilia, and I wanted to hear her story.