Jon van Rood

Johannes Joseph "Jon" van Rood (born 7 April 1926 in Scheveningen; † 21 July 2017 in Leeuwarden) was a Dutch immunologist.

Van Rood was the son of an engineer and a musician and studied medicine at Leiden University from 1944. From 1957 to 1991 he was head of the Department of Immunohaematology at Leiden University Hospital (where he received his doctorate in 1962 with the thesis Leucocyte Grouping) and professor of internal medicine at Leiden University (from 1969 as full professor, from 1991 as professor emeritus). In 1976 he became Head of the Faculty of Hematology there and later Director of the Institute of Immunology. In 1962 he was at the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) of the New York City Department of Health, and from 1986 to 1996 he was a visiting professor at the Free University of Brussels.

He was founder and past president of the European Foundation of Immunogenetics and of Eurotransplant (1967, then for kidney transplantation). He is co-founder of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT). From 2004 to 2008 he was on the governing council of Allostem. He was President of the Europdonor Foundation (for stem cell transplantation).

He was one of the discoverers of the HLA system (1958, around the same time as Jean Dausset, R. Payne) and introduced HLA typing into transfusion and transplantation medicine.

In 1977 he received the Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award and the Robert Koch Prize. In 1978 he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine for his contributions to the understanding of the HLA complex in humans and its role in disease and in transplantation. In 1989 he received the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine, the Franz Oehlecker Medal in 1984, the James Blundell Award of the British Blood Transfusion Society, the Rose Payne Award (1991), the Max Geldens Prize (1991), the A.H. Heineken Prize in Medicine (1990), the Medawar Prize in 1996, and the Royal Medal of the Dutch Red Cross in 1997. He was a Knight of the Lion of the Netherlands (1985) and Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau. He was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1978), the National Academy of Sciences, and the Academia Europaea. He was an honorary member of the US and Scandinavian Societies of Immunology, the European Society for Organ Transplantation, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists.

He was married to Sacha Baroness van Tuyll van Serooskerken from 1956 and leaves three children. One of his hobbies was sailing. He also held summer courses in immunology on a two-masted schooner in the Zuider See.

The Jon J. van Rood Center for Transfusion Medicine at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) was established in 2010. A prize from the European Blood and Marrow Transplant Group and the European Federation of Immunogenetics have been named after him since 2010.

In 1985, he received the InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize.