Allan Victor Hoffbrand is Emeritus Professor of Haematology at University College, London. He is distinguished for his research and as an author of internationally read textbooks of haematology. He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1935. After education at Bradford Grammar School, he gained an Open Scholarship in 1953 to The Queen's College, Oxford. He gained a BA degree in Physiology and began clinical studies at The (now Royal) London Hospital in 1957 and qualified in medicine at University of Oxford, BM BCH in 1959.