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David Boris Pall, founder of Pall Corporation, was the chemist who invented the Pall filter used in blood transfusions.
Born in Thunder Bay, Ontario of Russian immigrant parents, he grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and attended McGill University, from which he was granted a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
He moved to New York in 1938 and became a part of the Manhattan Project. In 1946, he established Pall Corporation. The company's initial focus was on the development of filters for use in aircraft hydraulics. However, in 1959, when Dr. Pall's first wife, Josephine, died of aplastic anemia, he began to work on the Pall filter.
Mrs. Pall had undergone multiple blood transfusions in the course of an illness, which were ultimately unsuccessful. The Pall filter makes blood transfusions significantly safer by filtering out white blood cells, thereby reducing the incidence of transfusion reactions and viral infections. Today, Pall Corporation has sales in excess of $2.0 Billion.
In his lifetime, Dr. Pall received over 180 patents and in 1990, he received the United States National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush.
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