David Pall

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David Boris Pall (2 April 1914 - 21 September 2004) 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 the Pall Corporation, which developed filters used in aircraft.

His first wife, Josephine, who had undergone multiple transfusions in the course of her illness, died of aplastic anemia in 1959. Pall began work on the Pall filter, which makes blood transfusions significantly safer by filtering out white blood cells, thereby reducing the incidence of transfusion reactions and viral infections.

Pall, a trustee of the North Shore University Hospital, died of complications of Alzheimer's disease at his last home in Roslyn Estates, New York.