Charles Dodds life and biography

Edward Charles Dodds (13 Oct 1899 - 16 Dec 1973) was a British biochemist.

He was born in Liverpool in 1899, the only child of Ralph Edward and Jane (née Pack) Dodds. The family shortly moved to Leeds, then to Darlington and then to Chesham, Bucks, where he attended Harrow County School. From there he entered the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1916, spent one year in the army in 1917, and qualified MRCS and LRCP in 1921.

In 1924 he was appointed to the new Chair of Biochemistry at the University of London which was started in the Bland Sutton Institute of Pathology at the Middlesex. Three years later, he was appointed Director of the recently completed Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry and retained these two appointments until his retirement forty years later. His scientific interests were wide and varied; he had a continuing interest in the problem of cancer and of research into its causation, and was an authority on food and diet and also devoted time and energy to the problems of rheumatism. He provided facilities and gave advice and encouragement to younger colleagues in such work as immunopathology, steroid chemistry, cytochemistry and the work which led to the discovery of Aldosterone.

In 1942 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society and subsequently served as Vice-President. He served the Royal College of Physicians for some years as Harveian Librarian and in 1962 was elected President, the first to hold the office who was laboratory based and not engaged in clinical practice. During his term of office as President he was invested as a knight into the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (K.St.J.)(1954) and created 1st Baronet Dodds of West Chiltington, co. Sussex (1964).

He co-authored a number of books such as The Laboratory in Surgical practice,Chemical and Physiological Propertes of Medicine and Recent Advances in British Medicine .

In 1923 he had married Constance Jordan of Darlington; they had one son, Sir Ralph Jordan Dodds, who succeeded to his title on his death in 1973.

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