Sorby Research Institute

The Sorby Research Institute was a research facility that operated in the UK during and immediately after the Second World War in Sheffield, England. The Institute mostly investigated questions of nutrition. This was an important consideration in wartime Britain, where food was in short supply. The experiments into deficiency of vitamin A and vitamin C were particularly notable. However, other kinds of medical research was also undertaken, such as research into the transmission of scabies.

The leading figures in the institute were Kenneth Mellanby and Hans Adolf Krebs. The volunteers were mainly conscientious objectors to military service. Some of the experiments were unpleasant, or even dangerous. The Institute closed in 1946, soon after the end of the war.

Early in 1941 twelve volunteers, pacifist conscientious objectors, recruited via the Sheffield Pacifist Service Unit, were established in a large house in a residential area of Sheffield for research that would "benefit humanity". Various medical experiments were conducted on the volunteers. No work that had a direct military application was undertaken since this would not have been acceptable to many conscientious objectors. This establishment became known as the Sorby Research Institute, so named because the leading researcher, Kenneth Mellanby, was a Sorby Research Fellow of the Royal Society at Sheffield University. The fellowship is itself named after Henry Clifton Sorby, a notable Sheffield scientist. Hans Adolf Krebs took over the management of the volunteers in 1943 when Mellanby left to work for the army.

The establishment was founded on the personal initiative of Mellanby and at first he was free to carry out whatever investigations he chose. Mellanby's status as a scientist meant that he was in a reserved occupation and forbidden from joining the armed forces. Although he wished to do something for the war effort, the military of the time had no use for biologists. Consequently, Mellanby initiated what he considered useful work himself.

The first experiment was an investigation into scabies. Mellanby had an interest in head lice infestation and scabies was thus a natural area of research for him. Another early experiment looked into water deprivation of survivors in lifeboats. However, the most important work of the Institute was into nutrition, particularly vitamin deficiency. In a period of severe rationing in Britain, it was important for the government to know how far this could be taken and what the consequences would be. This work was commissioned by the Medical Research Council at the request of the Ministry of Health.

The work of the Sorby Research Institute continued until early 1946. The building is now used as residential accommodation for students from Sheffield University.

There were initially 12 volunteers at the house. This eventually grew to 35, including three women. Walter Bartley acted as technician and assistant to Mellanby and later became a professor at Sheffield University, but he also served as a volunteer experiment subject. All the volunteers were young; the 19 men and one woman in the vitamin C experiment were aged between 17 and 34. Some volunteers had regular jobs outside the programme, the rest were expected to carry out domestic tasks in the house. They were also given duties to perform for the experimenters such as collecting data.

Mellanby chose to use conscientious objectors because they were the only group of healthy young people who were not likely to be taken away from him for some military purpose in the middle of an experiment. For their part, the conscientious objectors wished to take part so that they could do something with an equivalent risk to military service.