Cyril Clarke

He married Frieda “Feo” in 1935. Theirs was a happy marriage that produced three sons. His wife was very supportive of his research work and helped him in breeding butterflies.

He had a lifelong love for butterflies and moths. He collected and bred them, and was an expert at crossing different species; his favorite, however was the Swallowtail.

He was devastated by the death of his beloved wife in 1998 and never fully recovered from this tragedy. He lived a long life and died on November 21, 2000 at the age of 93.

He was born on August 22, 1907 into a medical family in Leicester, England. He was the son of Dr. Astley Clarke and the nephew of Percy Gee, two men who were among the founders of the University of Leicester.

He attended the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester before moving to the independent Oundle School near Peterborough. He was bullied at Oundle and developed a severe dislike for the institution.

He developed an interest in butterflies and moths during his school days. He was sent to the Leicestershire village of Houghton-on-the-Hill during the World War I where his 16 year old governess introduced him to the hobby of collecting butterflies and moths.

He opted to study Natural Sciences at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge from where he graduated in 1929. Then he studied Medicine and Surgery at Guy’s Hospital, London, graduating in 1932.

He served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a medical specialist during the World War II. He studied the severe malnutrition and the resulting neurological complications in the British prisoners of war liberated from the Japanese camps and wrote a paper on it.

After the war, Clarke was appointed as a registrar at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. In 1946 he became an honorary consultant physician at the David Lewis Northern Hospital, Liverpool.

He was appointed Director of the Nuffield Unit of Medical Genetics based at the University of Liverpool in 1963 and became Professor of Medicine a couple of years later. The teaching position suited him very well and he proved to be an enthusiastic and stimulating educator. The Department of Clinical Genetics thrived under his guidance.

He was elected Censor by the Royal College of Physicians in 1967 and became the Senior Censor four years later. In 1970 Clarke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was elected the President of the college when the then President Lord Rosenheim stepped down from the post in 1972.

He brought about a lot of changes during his tenure as the president. He initiated a review of the College constitution and ensured that the hitherto quirky MRCP examination was revamped into a proper test of clinical skills.

He is best remembered for his research in Rhesus Haemolytic Disease (RHD), also known as the ‘yellow baby’. The potentially fatal condition that arose in some of the children of Rhesus negative mothers and Rhesus positive fathers was believed to be incurable. However, the brilliant doctor developed the use of an antibody, anti-D, which could prevent this dangerous condition in newborns.