Dr
George William Scott Blair was born on 23 July 1902, of Scottish ancestry, in
Weybridge, England. After leaving school he read chemistry at Trinity College,
Oxford where his tutor was Sir Cyril Hinshelwood. After graduating he was
employed as a colloid chemist in Manchester where he worked on the viscosity of
flour suspensions. In 1926 he was offered a post in the Physics department of
the Rothamsted Experimental Station, working on soil science, where he remained
for ten years.
For the next thirty years he was employed by the National Institute for Research in Dairying at the University of Reading. There he worked on the rheology of butter, cheese and cheese curd. He also studied the properties of mucus from the uterine cervix of the cow, which resulted in early detection of pregnancy, with correct results at 28 days after conception in healthy cows.
Eventually this work interested gynaecologists and during the war he went to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford to work on cervical secretions in women. Scott Blair's research papers also cover areas such as biorheology and psychorheology. After he retired in 1967 he worked on the flow and coagulation of blood at the Oxford Haemophilia Centre.
Scott Blair played a pivotal role in the formation of the British Rheologists Club (later renamed as the British Society of Rheolgy) in 1941. He was President of the British Society of Rheology from 1949-1951. In 1969 he was awarded the Poiseuille Gold Medal of the International Society of Haemorheology (now Biorheology) and in 1970 he received the Founders Gold Medal of the British Society of Rheology.
Outside his profession his interests included music, modern languages and the philosophy of science.