Clifford Dobell 1886-1949 / [Cecil Arthur Hoare and Doris L. Mackinnon].

  • Cecil Hoare
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Clifford Dobell 1886-1949 / [Cecil Arthur Hoare and Doris L. Mackinnon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    He entered Trinity College in 1903, at the unusually early age of seventeen. He always considered it a stroke of good fortune to have had for his tutor there the distinguished zoologist, Adam Sedgwick, whose inspiration and friendship had a great influence upon his development and ultimately determined the course of his scientific career. Passionately fond of animals, he thought at first he would like to be a veterinary surgeon, but he soon changed his mind and took up medicine instead, passing in 1904 his First, and in 1906 his Second M.B. Examinations, with distinction in human anatomy and physiology. In 1905 he gained an Exhibition in Natural Sciences, and in 1906 got a Major Scholarship and took the Degree of B.A. with first-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, offering—in addition to the two medical subjects—zoology and chemistry, and winning the highest marks for the whole university. In 1910 he obtained the Degree of M.A. As an undergraduate Dobell had a very difficult time financially. In fact, his father would not have been able to send him to Cambridge if Mr Chadwick had not generously come to the assistance of his favourite pupil. Much later, during the 191T-1918 war, Dobell learnt that the money which his father had borrowed was not repaid, and he promptly settled the debt in full—plus compound interest—from his hard-earned savings. After graduating in 1906, he had resolved—with Sedgwick’s approval and encouragement—to abandon the study of medicine and devote his life to proto¬ zoology, a subject in which he had by then become deeply interested. He received his early training from W. S. Perrin, who subsequently became a well-known surgeon, but in those days was University Demonstrator in zoology under Sedgwick, then head of the Zoological Laboratory. Sedgwick long cherished the hope of founding a department of protozoology at Cambridge: and so, when Perrin had graduated with distinction and desired to take up research, Sedgwick persuaded him to study the Protozoa, and sent him for training to Prowazek—one of Schaudinn’s most zealous disciples — under whom he worked in Rovigno (Istria). In his reminiscences of Perrin, Dobell (1936a) thus recalls their relations: ‘I first got to know Perrin properly in the summer of 1906. ... I was put to work beside him in the old Zoological Laboratory, with instructions to pick up as much as I could. ... As we were engaged in entirely different investigations, and both eager to learn all we could, the distinction between master and pupil soon vanished. . . . Sedgwick’s dream of a department devoted to Protozoology had momentarily come true! It took shape as one small and dingy room, divided accurately down the middle, with Perrin as high priest in the right half and myself as novice in the left.’ The two continued to work side by side during 1906 and 1907, living on their scholarships and by coaching in the evenings. ‘These were great days for both of us’, continues Dobell: ‘We worked in our laborator)^ and in our rooms in college for seven days in every week, and for anything up to sixteen or seventeen hours a day. .' . . Looking back on these early days, I now realize how lucky I was to have had Perrin for my mentor. . . . He it was who taught me many of those little tricks of the trade which are seemingly so obvious but really so baffling to a beginner.’ During this period Dobell was attending advanced D*
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