Sir Christopher Martin Dobson FRS FMedSci FRSC^[1] (8 October 1949 – 8 September 2019) was a British chemist, who was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.^[2]

Dobson was born on 8 October 1949 in Rinteln, Germany, where his father, Arthur Dobson was commissioned as an officer.^[1][3] Both Arthur Dobson and Christopher Dobson's mother, Mabel Dobson (née Pollard), were originally from Bradford in Yorkshire and had left school at age 14.^[3] Dobson had two older siblings, Graham and Gillian.^[3] Due to his father's postings, Dobson also lived in Lagos, Nigeria.^[3]

Christopher Dobson was educated at Hereford Cathedral Junior School, and then Abingdon School from 1960 until 1967.^[3][4] He completed a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy^[5] at the University of Oxford, where he was a student of Keble College, Oxford and Merton College, Oxford.^[3]

Dobson's research largely focused on protein folding and protein misfolding, and its association with medical disorders particularly Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.^[1] By applying chemical and biophysical techniques, Dobson investigated links between protein structure, function, and disease.^[6]

He is well known for his serendipitous discovery that ordinary proteins can misfold and aggregate to form amyloid structures.^[3]

"A postdoc who left his sample of an unfolded protein in an NMR [nuclear magnetic resonance] spectrometer over a long weekend discovered, on his return, that it had turned into a gel. We were curious about this phenomenon and found that the NMR tube was full of amyloid fibrils that we then thought were associated only with diseases".

— Christopher M. Dobson, ^[7]

Dobson authored and co-authored over 800 papers and review articles,^[8] including 38 in Nature, Science and Cell, which have been cited over 100,000 times.^[9] As of 2019^[update] his H-index is 153.^[9]

Dobson held research fellowships at Merton College, Oxford and then Linacre College, Oxford before working at Harvard University. He returned to Oxford in 1980 as a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and as a University Lecturer in Chemistry, later receiving promotions to Reader, then Professor of Chemistry in 1996.^[1][3]

Dobson moved to the University of Cambridge in 2001 as the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology. In 2007, he became the Master of St John's College, Cambridge, a post which he held until his death in September 2019.^[3][10]

In 2012, Dobson founded the Cambridge Centre for Misfolding Diseases,^[3] which is currently based in the Chemistry of Health building at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.^[10][11]

In 2016, Chris Dobson co-founded Wren Therapeutics, a biotechnology start-up company whose mission is to find new therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease.^[12][6][13]

Dobson met his wife, Dr Mary Dobson (née Schove) at Merton College at the University of Oxford.^[3] They had two sons, Richard and William.^[8][10]

He died on 8 September 2019, from cancer, at Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, near Surrey.^[8]