Ethel Bidwell

Ethel Bidwell PhD (12 July 1919 – 23 October 2003) was a British research scientist who investigated blood coagulation and whose discoveries have been used to successfully perform major surgery on patients with severe haemophilia.

Biography Bidwell was born on 12 July 1919 in Haslingden, Lancashire. She studied to become an enzyme chemist.

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

In 1959 Bidwell was working on the preparation of human coagulation factors at the Medical Research Council Blood Coagulation Research Unit at Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford, assisted by Ross Dike. with the first patient (after clinical trials) recorded in 1961.

Bidwell retired in 1981.