Mike Robins obituary

My father, Mike Robins, who has died aged 86, was a physiologist and cancer biologist whose research focus was on the growth of cells. He wrote many academic papers and, with Benjamin King, revised the standard undergraduate book Cancer Biology (2006).

He also loved marine biology and, with diving friends and colleagues at the University of London Sub Aqua Club, contributed in the 1960s and 70s to early descriptions of the marine ecology of Swanage Bay in Dorset, the Scilly Isles and Lundy. His particular interest was marine hydroids and the ecology of Dead Man’s Fingers (Alcyoniums). During a summer diving season in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey in 1970 he found and named a new hydroid species – Monobrachium antarcticum .

Mike was born on the Isle of Dogs in east London, to Violet (nee Fairbanks), a waiter, and Bill Robins, a porter at Covent Garden market. After attending Marylebone secondary modern school, he worked hard to enter academia, taking evening classes and a part-time first degree course in zoology at Birkbeck, University of London. He went on to complete a doctorate on cell proliferation at the Royal Dental College.

Mike was appointed a lecturer in the Zoology Department at Birkbeck in the early 60s. In the early 70s he moved to King’s College London as lecturer in physiology, teaching dental and medical students. He continued there as senior lecturer until his retirement in 2003.

After many years of trudging across Gladstone Park in London to the nearest tube station, Mike rediscovered the bicycle in his 50s, cycling to work for a decade or more. Early in his retirement he enjoyed the classic cycling challenge of the end to end (journeying from Land’s End to John o’Groats), travelling with a group organised by the Cyclists’ Touring Club.

Having spent lots of time diving in Swanage Bay, later in life he set up a second home in Purbeck with his wife Jackie. A seasoned traveller, on his holiday trips Mike often added in some diving and a chance to scan the local hydroid population. He loved exotic and especially Asian food, having learned Bengali cooking from an early flatmate.

Although he could appear serious at times, those of us who knew him understood his dark sense of humour, very much of the Goon Show/Monty Python genre.

He is survived by Jackie (nee Smith), whom he married in 1966, their two children, Jo and Alex, and me, two grandchildren, Ted and Laurie, and a great-grandson, Cyrus. His first marriage, to my mother, Sylvia (nee Clark), ended in divorce.