Denis Anthony Mitchison

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Professor Denis Anthony Mitchison CMG, with whom I had the privilege of working for several decades.

Denis Anthony Mitchison was born in Oxford on 6 September 1919 to a family of scientific and scholarly distinction: he was the son of the Labour politician Dick Mitchison and his wife, Naomi (née Haldane), a novelist and poet. His uncle was the biologist J B S Haldane and his grandfather the physiologist John Scott Haldane.

Educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Abbotsholme School, Mitchison went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences and obtained a first class degree and a senior scholarship. He then changed to medicine, qualifying from University College in 1943.

Throughout his academic life, Mitchison had a major role in the treatment of …