My father, Mike Robins, who has died aged 86, was a physiologist and most cancers biologist whose analysis focus was on the expansion of cells. He wrote many tutorial papers and, with Benjamin King, revised the usual undergraduate ebook Most cancers Biology (2006).
He additionally beloved marine biology and, with diving mates and colleagues on the College of London Sub Aqua Membership, contributed within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s to early descriptions of the marine ecology of Swanage Bay in Dorset, the Scilly Isles and Lundy. His explicit curiosity was marine hydroids and the ecology of Lifeless Man’s Fingers (Alcyoniums). Throughout a summer season diving season in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey in 1970 he discovered and named a brand new hydroid species – Monobrachium antarcticum.
Mike was born on the Isle of Canines in east London, to Violet (nee Fairbanks), a waiter, and Invoice Robins, a porter at Covent Backyard market. After attending Marylebone secondary fashionable faculty, he labored onerous to enter academia, taking night courses and a part-time first diploma course in zoology at Birkbeck, College of London. He went on to finish a doctorate on cell proliferation on the Royal Dental Faculty.
Mike was appointed a lecturer within the Zoology Division at Birkbeck within the early 60s. Within the early 70s he moved to King’s Faculty London as lecturer in physiology, instructing dental and medical college students. He continued there as senior lecturer till his retirement in 2003.
After a few years of trudging throughout Gladstone Park in London to the closest tube station, Mike rediscovered the bicycle in his 50s, biking to work for a decade or extra. Early in his retirement he loved the basic biking problem of the tip to finish (journeying from Land’s Finish to John o’Groats), travelling with a bunch organised by the Cyclists’ Touring Membership.
Having spent numerous time diving in Swanage Bay, later in life he arrange a second house in Purbeck together with his spouse Jackie. A seasoned traveller, on his vacation journeys Mike usually added in some diving and an opportunity to scan the native hydroid inhabitants. He beloved unique and particularly Asian meals, having discovered Bengali cooking from an early flatmate.
Though he may seem severe at instances, these of us who knew him understood his darkish sense of humour, very a lot of the Goon Present/Monty Python style.
He’s survived by Jackie (nee Smith), whom he married in 1966, their two kids, Jo and Alex, and me, two grandchildren, Ted and Laurie, and a great-grandson, Cyrus. His first marriage, to my mom, Sylvia (nee Clark), led to divorce.
