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Charles Morley Wenyon

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Charles Morley Wenyon

Charles Morley Wenyon CMG CBE FRS FRSM[1] (1878–1948) was a distinguished English protozoologist.[2]

Biography

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Wenyon was born on 24 March 1878 in Liverpool, to Eliza Morley (née Gittins) and Charles Wenyon, a medical doctor and missionary. In 1880, the family moved to Fatshan in China. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath from 1892, and studied zoology and physiology at Yorkshire College, Leeds, and then at University College, London, graduating in 1901. His medical degree (1904) was from Guy's Hospital.[1]

He briefly had a practice in Camberwell but in 1905 became head of the new protozoological department of the London School of Tropical Medicine. During his time there, he studied protozoology at the Pasteur Institute, Paris (with Félix Mesnil) and the Zoological Institute, Munich (with Richard Hertwig). He spent a year in the Sudan in 1907–8, attached to the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, as well as visiting Iraq (1910), Syria (1911) and Malta (1913). Much of his research in this period was on leishmaniasis.[1]

In 1914 he joined the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research, London, as director of research in the tropics. During the First World War, he joined the Medical Advisory Committee in the Near East, with which he travelled to Egypt, India and Mesopotamia in 1916 and 1917, researching dysentery. He then researched malaria in Salonika, Macedonia (1917–19) and the Caucasus (1920). Returning to London, he became director of the Wellcome Bureau in 1924 and then head of the Wellcome Research Institution and research director of the Wellcome Foundation from 1932 until 1944. He continued to research in retirement.[1]

In 1926, he published the two-volume textbook, Protozoology,[1] a "standard work" in the field, according to his obituarist in The Times,[3] and was editor of the Kala-Azar Bulletin. He served as president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1945–47, after being joint honorary secretary from 1920.[1]

He was twice married, with two daughters and a son. He died in London on 24 October 1948, from heart failure.[1]

Honours and prizes

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Wenyon was awarded many honours and prizes for his work during his lifetime including:

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Hoare, Cecil A. (1949). "Charles Morley Wenyon. 1878-1948". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 6 (18): 626–642. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1949.0017. JSTOR 768944. S2CID 84306705.
  2. ^ Garnham, P. C. (1979). "Charles Morley Wenyon, 1878--1948". International Journal for Parasitology. 9 (2): 83–84. doi:10.1016/0020-7519(79)90094-8. PMID 374292.
  3. ^ Dr. C. M. Wenyon. The Times (51212), p. 6 (26 October 1948)
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