The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, using a grant of £250,000 from Edward Cecil Guinness of the Guinness family. It had premises in Chelsea in London, Sudbury in Suffolk, and Elstree in Hertfordshire, England. It was the first medical research charity in the United Kingdom. It was renamed the Jenner Institute (after Edward Jenner the pioneer of smallpox vaccine) in 1898 and then, in 1903, as the Lister Institute in honour of the great surgeon and medical pioneer, Dr Joseph Lister.