John H. Humphrey

John Herbert Humphrey was a British bacteriologist and immunologist.

He was born on December 16, 1915 and was educated at Winchester School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated from University College Hospital medical school in 1940.

He was a houseman at the Hammersmith Hospital, and was the Jenner research student at the Lister Institute from 1941 to 1942. He was assistant pathologist at the Central Middlesex Hospital from 1943 to 1946, then joined the external staff of the Medical Research Council as a bacteriologist at University College Hospital in 1946. Humphrey joined the staff of the National Institute for Medical Research in 1949, working in the Division of Biological Standards. 

With James Lightbown he established international standards for antibiotics and enzymes, and later developed a long-standing association with the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standards. In November 1956 Humphrey founded the British Society for Immunology alongside Robin Coombs, Bob White, and Avrion Mitchison. He was president of the International Union of Immunological Societies. In 1957 he became head of the Institute's new Division of Immunology. From 1961 to 1976 Humphrey was Deputy Director of NIMR, and became acting director in 1969. In 1975, Humphrey left NIMR to be Professor of Immunology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith. He retired in 1981.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963. He delivered the 1981 Croonian Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians on The Value of Immunological Concepts in Medicine.

Humphrey died on December 25, 1987.