Clifford Dobell

Cecil Clifford Dobell FRS (22 February 1886, Birkenhead – 23 December 1949, London) was a biologist, specifically a protozoologist. He studied intestinal amoebae, and algae. He was a leading authority on the history of protistology.

From 1910 to 1919, Dobell was assistant professor of protistology and cytology at Imperial College London. During the First World War he helped military medical staff improve prevention and treatment of ailments associated with intestinal protozoa. At this time he was, as P. O. Crossfield in the British Medical Journal later explained, "one of the first to demonstrate the existence and to appreciate the epidemiological significance of symptomless carriers of Entamoeba histolytica, whose number among the inhabitants of Great Britain he estimated at 10%."

In 1918, at the age of 32, Dobell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1919 he published a monograph, The Amoebae Living in Man. In 1932 he published the authoritative work on Antonie van Leeuwenhoek: Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his "Little Animals", which was reprinted in 1960 .