He was born in
London but attended
Diocesan College in
Cape Town. Subsequently he returned to Britain and studied
veterinary medicine at the
University of Edinburgh. In 1943 he entered
King's College, Cambridge, where he commenced work on a doctorate, which he gained in 1947. Before finishing his doctorate, he developed and published methods to detect antibodies with
Arthur Mourant and
Robert Russell Race in 1945. This is the test now referred to as the
Coombs test, which, according to the legend, was first devised while Coombs was travelling on the train. Coombs became a professor and researcher at the Department of Pathology of
University of Cambridge, becoming a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and a founder of its Division of Immunology. He was appointed the fourth
Quick Professor of Biology in 1966 and continued to work at Cambridge University until 1988. In November 1956, Coombs founded the
British Society for Immunology alongside
John H. Humphrey, Bob White, and
Avrion Mitchison. He was an honorary member of the British Society for Immunology. He received honorary doctoral degrees by the
University of GuelphCanada, and the
University of Edinburgh and was a
Fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom (1965), a Fellow of the
Royal College of Pathologists and an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal College of Physicians. Coombs was married to Anne Blomfield, his first graduate student. They had a son and a daughter. ==Works==