Charles James Martin

Early life Born in Wilmot House, Dalston, he was the twelfth

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1901.

During World War I he served with the Australian Army Medical Corps in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France as a pathologist with the rank of Lieutenant-colonel. He found some cases of enteric fever at Gallipoli were not typhoid, but paratyphoids A and B, and made a vaccine for all three. A memo to his colleagues on the different treatments for amoebic and bacillary dysentery was widely circulated by the army under Martin’s name. In France he organized the integration of decentralized pathology services into the A.A.M.C. 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. In 1934 he undertook an experimental study of the myxoma virus, at Cambridge and on a rabbit-infested island in Pembrokeshire, to show it was both safe and effective to control plagues of rabbits.

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 the 1927 birthday honours.

His contributions to the foundation of biological science in Australia were commemorated by the National Health and Medical Research Council, which created the Sir Charles James Martin Overseas Biomedical Fellowships in 1951.

Personal life Martin married Edith Cross, daughter of Alfred Cross (and aunt of the Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Geoffrey Cross and the legal scholar Rupert Cross) in 1891. She died 2 March 1954. They had one daughter, Maisie. Martin died 15 February 1955 at Old Chesterton, Cambridge. He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.