Winifred Mayer Ashby (1879–1975): Medical Laboratory Scientist Extraordinaire

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Winifred Mayer Ashby was born in London, England in 1879. She later relocated with her family to the United States in Chicago, Illinois and became a citizen when she was 14 years old. She studied at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago; at the latter institution, she attained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1903. She then earned a Master of Science degree from Washington University in 1905. Next, she relocated to the Philippines, where she taught in schools and studied malnutrition. When she returned to the United States, she worked for a few years teaching chemistry and science in high schools; also, she worked in several clinical and medical laboratories. In 1917, while working at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, she won a fellowship training award in pathology and immunology. At the Mayo Clinic, she began her seminal work on survival measurements of red blood corpuscles in healthy individuals and in patients with a variety of diseases. During that time she also performed studies on compatibility assessments and the transfusion of human blood. Blood groups had recently been elucidated and were initially named using Roman numerals: I (A), II (B), III (AB), and IV (O). Because of these antigenic differences, she was able to transfuse compatible group-O blood to patients of other types and then agglutinate out the inherited blood type by in vitro techniques. She then painstakingly diluted and counted the remaining cells on a hemacytometer using a microscope over a period of days and weeks. During the ensuing years, this technique was refined by other researchers and became commonly known as differential agglutination, or the Ashby technique. This technique is now widely recognized in the scientific community as constituting a milestone in the understanding of erythrocyte physiology.