Obituary. In memory of Erik Thorsby (1938-2021).
With sadness we received the message that our good friend and colleague Erik Thorsby has passed away. Erik was one of the pioneers, who made several important contributions to the field of histocompatibility and immunogenetics.
Short summary of his scientific work
Erik started his professional career in 1966 at the Ullevaal Hospital in Oslo, Norway. At that time kidney transplantation had just started in Scandinavia and Erik became very much interested in histocompatibility and the role of HLA matching in renal transplantation. His studies revealed several new HLA antigens and, in collaboration with Fleming Kissmeyer-Nielsen, he provided in 1970 convincing evidence for the existence of a third HLA locus, HLA-C[1]. Erik became one of the initiators and the histocompatibility expert of Scandiatransplant [2], which had its 50 years anniversary in 2019.