Clifford Dobell 1886-1949

The sudden and premature death of Clifford Dobell on 23 December 1949, in London, deprived the scientific world of one of the outstanding protozoologists of all time—a man who had made important and lasting contributions to biology, medicine and the history of science. Clifford Dobell (though christened Cecil Clifford, he never used the first of these names) was born on 22 February 1886 at Birkenhead, in Cheshire. He was the eldest son and the second of the five children of William Blount Dobell (1859-1927), and his wife Agnes née Thornely (1852-1942). The Dobells are an ancient English family, probably descended from Angles who settled in Kent and Sussex before the Norman Conquest. Their name is in Domesday Book but its derivation is not certainly known; in the older records it is spelt variously, but since about 1600 the present form has been usual in the main branch of the family, to which Clifford belonged. Clifford’s father, William Blount, was left motherless when only three years old. At the age of seventeen, when his father emigrated to America with his second family, he went to Birkenhead, where he worked in the office of the Lancashire Coal Company for a few years, until he set up as a coal merchant on his own account. In his twenty-fourth year (1883) he married Agnes Thornely, who also early became an orphan and was brought up by her grandfather, Samuel Thornely of Liverpool, and a spinster aunt, Caroline Thornely. Agnes had a good education for a girl of her generation—at school she learnt German, French and some Italian, and had excellent instruction in music. She was very musical indeed, and could play the piano, the violin and the organ well enough to make her wish to take up music professionally after leaving school: but her grandfather would not hear of it. Clifford’s love and appreciation of music were undoubtedly inherited from his mother: his father was quite unmusical.