Frank Dickens

Background

He was born in Northampton, England, and educated at Northampton Grammar School.

Education

He graduated in 1921 and then attended Imperial College, London and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in organic chemistry.

Career

He did not take this up till 1919 as he enlisted in the army, becoming a second lieutenant in the Northamptonshire Regiment, although he was not in action. In 1923 he began research at the Middlesex Hospital in London working with Dodds on insulin to make it available for patients. He then did work with Dodds on the isolation of a female sex hormone Stilboestrol which led to its evenutal synthesis in 1938.

He spent 1929 working with Otto Warburg in Berlin and later translated Warburg"s book Über den Stoffwechsel der Tumoren (the Metabolism of Tumours) into English.

From 1933 to 1946 Dickens was Director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. Dodds then invited him back to the Courtauld Institute as the Philip Hill Professor of Experimental Biochemistry where he did research on the mechanism of how energy is derived by living tissues from carbohydrates, known as the "pentose phosphate pathway", and its link to the rate of tumour growth.

Achievements

• He father was the owner of a leather factory in Kettering Road, Northampton, which his four brothers joined and turned into Dickens Brothers Limited. However, Frank developed an interest in science and won a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1918.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Murder On The Second Floor- A Mystery Play In Three Acts
  • Murder on the Second Floor

Membership

Royal Society.