T. J. Hamblin

Terence John Hamblin (12 March 1943 – 8 January 2012) was a British academic and scientist who was professor of immunohaematology at the University of Southampton from 1987 until his death.

Life and career Born in Worcester, England, Hamblin's early years were spent in Aldershot in Hampshire where he and his family lived on Cambridge Road; he was educated at Farnborough Grammar School (1954–1961) and the University of Bristol.

Hamblin presented the BBC 2 episode 'Of Mice and Men' (1998) in its Counterblast series, in which he argued for the use of animals in medical research.

He publicised the fact that, contrary to popular belief, spinach contains no more iron than lettuce, while pink succulent lobster contains none at all; like all invertebrates its respiratory pigment is based on copper rather than iron. He claimed in a 1981 BMJ paper that the belief in spinach having a high iron content was due to a decimal point error that was discovered in the 1930s; Mike Sutton published an article in 2010 questioning Hamblin's story. In a later article, Sutton discovered that, contrary to popular belief, Hamblin was not the original source of the spinach decimal error myth.

He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002.

Hamblin died on 8 January 2012 of cancer.