John Finlayson, Ph.D. (1930-2020)

John Finlayson grew up in New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Ohio. He completed high school in 1945 at the age of 15 and went to college in Ohio where he was a pre-med student. Instead of going to medical school, however, he completed a masters (1955) and Ph.D. (1957) in biochemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was able to defer the military draft an extra year to do a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Radiophysics in Sweden. 

Finlayson returned to the United States in the fall of 1958 and received a commission in the Public Health Service (PHS). He was assigned to the Laboratory of Blood and Blood Products in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Division of Biologics Standards (DBS), where he carried out his two years of service. After 2.5 years, he went into inactive reserve for the PHS, staying in the same job at the Coagulation Section of the Laboratory of Blood and Blood Products as a civil service. He then continued to perform his duties when his section came under the jurisdiction of the FDA in 1972.  

Finlayson researched plasma derivatives most of his career, especially as related to hemophilia, a medical condition in which the blood cannot clot properly. Finlayson worked on Factor VIII, an essential blood-clotting protein, sometimes called anti-hemophilic factor (not licensed until 1966).

a man and woman scientist stand in a lab wearing white lab coats, looking at the camera smiling

Dr. John Finlayson and Mimi Reys in 1963 in a lab on the first floor of Building 29.

Lab equipment at the NIH 

Dr. John Finlayson's DEAE cellulose column. The column of DEAE (Diethylaminoethyl) cellulose in the back was synthesized by Finlayson. The far bottle holds water and acts a counterweight to hold the base of the rod. The string hanging down is a plumbline to keep the column straight. A Sigma pump (black piece) or Sigma motor pump with housing sits on the top. The housing had small steel fingers hooked to a camshaft for sigmoid motion (a sin curve). The round-bottom flask has tubing leading to a pump and then to a column and to an Erlenmeyer flask through a rubber stopper. The photo was taken inside the cold room of Bldg. 8, which was reinstalled in Building 29 after the move in 1960. Buddy Kleer was the refrigerator technician to handle the move. 

Photos from John Finlayson’s Collection at Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum.

By 1997, he became the Associate Director for Science at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the ultimate successor organization to DBS. Finlayson officially retired in 2004 but continued to volunteer part-time at the FDA through 2014, spending his entire 56-year career on the NIH campus, the first two years in Building 8, and then in Building 29. He passed away in 2020.

Dr. Finlayson worked in Building 29, first floor when his lab was part of the NIH. After the transition to the FDA, the Laboratory of Blood and Blood Products moved to the second and third floors of Building 29.


Oral History

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