Harry Harris

Royal Air Force: 1944–47 From 1945 to 1947 Harris served in the Royal Air Force as Medical Officer. The main purpose of the Unit was to investigate the extent of genetic variation in healthy humans using family and population studies and simple screening techniques.

In 1965, Harris returned to UCL and succeeded Lionel Penrose as professor of human genetics, a post he held until 1976. The Unit moved with him. The staff of the Unit identified over 30 new enzyme polymorphisms and continued to make contributions to linkage studies until 2000.

In 1976 Harris and his wife left England for the University of Pennsylvania, where he held the position of Harnwell Professor of Human Genetics. Harris retired in 1990 and became emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Death: 1994 Complications from small strokes contributed to Harris's death in 1994 at the age of 73.

Honours and awards Harris was presented with the Ambuj Nath Bose Prize from the Royal College of Physicians (1965) He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1966 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1973. He was honoured with the degree of Dr. Honoris Causa by the Université René Descartes, Paris in 1976. Archibald Garrod and Harry Harris. Inborn Errors of Metabolism, third edition 1963 The Principles of Human Biochemical Genetics (1970) Prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion (1975) David A. Hopkinson and Harry Harris. Handbook of Enzyme Electrophoresis in Human Genetics (1976) Advances in Human Genetics (1965–1990). A journal that Harris started in 1965 with Kurt Hirschhorn. It continued until Harris' retirement in 1990.

Select papers Harris authored and co-authored more than 340 manuscripts, a selection of which are below.

Harry Harris Archive The papers of Harry Harris, an archived collection of documents and correspondence from 1946 to 1990, are housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Included in the collection are his publications, lectures, theses of his students, photographs, and correspondence with numerous distinguished scientists including Victor A. McKusick, Lionel Penrose, John Maynard Smith, Robert Guthrie, J. B. S. Haldane, Hans Grüneberg, Joseph L. Goldstein, and Michael Stuart Brown.