Famous Scientist Charles James Martin

 

Charles James Martin

Charles James Martin, FRS, FRCS (9 January 1866 - 15 February 1955) was a British scientist who did seminal work on a very wide range of topics including snake toxins, control of body temperature, plague and the way it was spread, dysentery, typhoid and paratyphoid, nutrition and vitamin deficiencies, proteins, and myxomatosis as a means of controlling rabbit populations. He was the first director of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, serving from 1903 to 1930.

Born in Hackney, North London to Josiah (an insurance company actuary) and Elizabeth Mary Martin, Charles James was part of an extended family of children from his parents' previous marriages. Being a delicate child, he was sent off to a private boarding school in Hastings. At 15 he was employed as a junior clerk at the insurance firm where his father worked. He studied mathematics as a requirement for a future as actuary, but showed no special aptitude. Browsing through the numerous bookshops in the area, he came across a secondhand copy of "A Hundred Experiments in Chemistry for One Shilling." Carrying out these experiments, he was sufficiently inspired to entreat his father to allow him to pursue a career in science. He accordingly took evening classes at King's College, London. He then studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital and spent some time in Leipzig studying physiology under Karl Ludwig.


In 1887 he was appointed demonstrator in biology and physiology at King's College. In 1891 he accepted a post as lecturer at Sydney University, before moving to the University of Melbourne as acting Professor of Physiology. He remained in Australia for twelve years, after which he returned to the UK to become the first Director of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.


During WWI he served with the Australian Army Medical Corps in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France as a pathologist with the rank of Lieutenant-colonel. After the war he returned to the Lister Institute until his retirement in 1930. He then spent a further two years in Australia as head of the animal nutrition division of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in Adelaide. On his return to the UK he went to live at Roebuck House in Old Chesterton, Cambridge, which he equipped as a laboratory. During WWII it was used to rehouse the experimental animals being used for medical studies by the staff of the Lister Institute.

He was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1923 and delivered the Royal College of Physicians Croonian Lectures in 1930. He was knighted in 1927.