Alfred Lewin Copley 1972 Recipient of the Jean-Leonard-Marie Poiseuille Award Founder of Biorheology

During the first international Congress on biorheology(ICB), A.L.Copley was awarded the Poiseuille Gold Medal. The word of Biorheolgy was first introduced by Alfred L. Copley in 1948, at the 1st International Congress of Biorheology in Holland, in an attempt to give a precise identity to whole series of studies carried out at the frontier between biology and rheology. Dr.Copley was certainly the founder of "Biorheology". He had contributed to every aspect of biorheology and championed it's advancement and its dissemination. A.L. Copley had contributed researches on blood and blood vessels : his most useful contribution to the promotion of further research was his explanation for the fact that blood starts to clot on contact with all the surfaces except (other than in pathological conditions) the vessel wall. His theory of the existence of a fibrin-like "endoendothelial layer" on the vessel wall, although controversial led to much further research. He also introduced the term "hemorheology".