Background
MELLANBY, Kenneth was born on March 26, 1908 in Barrhead, Scotland. Son of Professor A. L. Mellanby.
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Kenneth MELLANBY
Edit Profileenvironmental consultant and editor
Education
Mellanby was educated at Barnard Castle School and then at King"s College, Cambridge. He gained his Doctor of Philosophy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the ability of parasites to survive desiccation. In the Second World War he studied the control of scabies mite, an infection that was keeping thousands of soldiers in hospital.
Career
He received the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his work on the scabies mite. He then worked as a Sorby Research Fellow of the Royal Society in Sheffield. He carried out research in volunteers at the Sorby Research Institute which he founded.
He showed that the mite was unable to survive in bedding, but was transferred only by close contact.
He showed further that a single treatment with benzyl benzoate provided a prompt cure. In 1945 he was awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for this work.
Mellanby helped to found Nigeria"s first University, the University of Ibadan and was its first principal (1947–1953). Mellanby Hall, the university"s first student hall of residence, is named after him.
On his return to England he worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and then became head of the Entomology Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station.
In 1961, Mellanby founded and served as director of the Monks Wood Experimental Station, an ecological research center in Huntingdon, England. He started the journal Environmental Pollution in 1970, and was the author of many books
Connections
Married 1st Helen Nielson Dow in 1933 (dissolved), 2nd Jean Louie Copeland in 1949.
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Born
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Died
December 23, 1993 (aged 85) -
Nationality
British