Denis Mitchison

Denis Anthony "Denny" Mitchison CMG (born 6 September 1919) is a British bacteriologist.

Mitchison was born in 1919, the son of the Labour politician Dick Mitchison and his wife, the writer Naomi (née Haldane). His uncle was the biologist J.B.S. Haldane and his grandfather the physiologist John Scott Haldane. His younger brothers are the zoologists Avrion Mitchison and Murdoch Mitchison.

In 1954 Denis Mitchison's mother wrote the fantasy book Graeme and the Dragon, in which the protagonist is her grandson, Denis's son Graeme Mitchison.

He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and Abbotsholme School, going on to Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied Natural Science obtaining a 1st class degree and a senior scholarship. He then changed to Medicine, qualifying from University College in 1943 and did postgraduate training in Pathology.

His first job in Pathology was at the Brompton Hospital at the time that the first clinical trial with a randomised intake between treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) with streptomycin or with bed rest alone was run.

Mitchison then continued his lifelong interest in the treatment of TB participating in the clinical trials organised by the Medical Research Council's Tuberculosis Research Unit (MRC TRU) with Director Philip D'Arcy Hart).

Following the decisive importance of drug-resistant tubercle bacilli in treatment, he was appointed in 1964 as Director of a new MRC Unit on Drug Resistance in Tuberculosis (later changed to MRC Unit for Laboratory Studies of Tuberculosis) at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School. He then worked closely with Dr Hart at the MRC TRU and later with Wallace Fox, Director of the MRC Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases Research Unit on developing effective treatment for TB at a cost sufficiently low to be affordable in developing countries.

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