Margaret Pereira obituary
Margaret Pereira, who has died aged 88, was a distinguished forensic scientist with an international reputation. Early in her career, she developed a highly sensitive method of investigating minute bloodstains to determine the ABO blood type of an individual. It was adopted worldwide as the Nicholls and Pereira (or N&P) method, Lewis Nicholls being her laboratory director.
The Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, which Margaret joined in 1947, would become an important centre for research into the rapidly expanding sciences devoted to the investigation of crime. Offences against the person involve biologists in the study of all body fluids - saliva and semen as well as blood. In order to pursue these studies, scientists at the laboratory, in common with researchers everywhere, routinely used themselves as guinea pigs, and Margaret was heard to remark that "in this job you don't have an orifice to call your own".
Continue reading...