Sir Charles James Martin
| Charles Martin | |
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| Born |
Charles James Martin 9 January 1866 |
| Died | 15 February 1955 (aged 89) |
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Sir Charles James Martin CMG 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 a director of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, serving from 1903 to 1930.
Born in Wilmot House, Dalston,Hackney, North London he was the twelfth child of Josiah (an insurance company actuary) and Elizabeth Mary Martin (née Lewis), 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.
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