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.
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