Humans of York: Ian Hitchcock
“I think for everyone in research, there’ll be a moment when you’ll find out something that nobody else on the planet knows... those are the times you live for.”
Ian is Professor of Experimental Haematology at the University of York. He recently oversaw the creation of the Centre for Blood Research - an ambition he'd held since taking on his professorial role in 2017.
On the face of it, Ian Hitchock’s journey has a satisfying, circular feel. Having joined the University of York as an undergraduate in the second half of the 90s, higher degrees followed, as did a ten-year stint in the United States, working for some of the world’s finest research institutions, before he returned to the UK, and to York, in 2014.
So far, so stellar, it might seem.
But these achievements didn't come easy. In fact, a career in academic research might not have happened at all but for a determination not to give up on the subject that fascinated him and the terrible loss of a much-admired school friend.
“I wasn’t very good at school,” says Ian. “I didn’t do badly in exams - but I didn’t do particularly well either.
“I found I’d struggle with subjects in which there are set answers. So maths was a struggle, I remember enjoying chemistry but wasn’t very good at it. The kind of subjects where you have to learn a set of rules; where there’s a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, I didn't seem to be able to do very well at those."
Going to school in Bedford, Ian was an enthusiastic, if not always successful, student. Concentration didn’t come easily as he struggled against what was then-undiagnosed dyslexia.
The more fertile learning grounds were the subjects which allowed room for debate, and here, he found, were the embryonic signs of a researcher-in-waiting.
“I did well in subjects where the answer was a little more subjective, where you’d put your best suggestion forward and aspects of that suggestion might be right or wrong,” he said.
Biology, he found, seemed to bring out the best in his curious, keen-to-debate nature.
“I suppose I was pretty good at it. And my mum was a technician in a biology lab at a local school, so there’d often be occasions where she would take me along to work and I’d be able to spend time in the tech room with her. I seemed to be constantly around biology in my family and it became second nature - something that I understood.
“When I got my A Level results, I told a friend I was going to find a cure for cancer. I know a lot of scientists say that, but what I’d seen happen to my friend - and the anger I felt - was my drive. I think I’m still driven by it.”
Ian Hitchcock, Director of the Centre for Blood Research, Humans of York, November 2023