Frankland, William

Frankland, William (Alfred William Frankland), 1912–2020, British allergist and immunologist. He studied medicine at Queens College, Oxford, and St. Mary's Hospital Medical School (now part of Imperial College, London), qualifying as a doctor in 1938. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Singapore, where he was taken prisoner in 1942 by the Japanese. After spending most of World War II in prison camps, he returned to St. Mary's and worked with Sir Alexander Fleming, the developer of penicillin. A pioneer of allergy medicine, he subsequently was director of St. Mary's allergy clinic (1958–1977). Frankland undertook clinical studies involving pollens and ran a pollen farm, from which he developed serums that were injected into patients with severe allergies to desensitize them. Using a pollen trap, he developed a pollen count system in the early 1960s, which led to the daily pollen reports that are now a staple of weather forecasts. He was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.

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