Mitchell, Philip H.

Philip Henry Mitchell (1893-1955), professor of biology, was born in Southbury, Connecticut, on December 13, 1893. He received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School in 1904, and, after earning his Ph.D. at Yale in 1907, he came to Brown as instructor in physiology. He was appointed assistant professor in 1911, associate professor in 1920, and professor in 1925. He was chairman of the department from 1933 to 1944, and was named Robert P. Brown Professor of Biology in 1936. From 1911 to 1921 he was involved in fisheries research at Woods Hole, first as research physiologist, and from 1917 to 1921 as research director of the Woods Hole Laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. His interest was the nutrition of shell fish, especially oysters. As an investigator for the Connecticut State Board of Fisheries and Game in the 1920s he studied the effect of pollution of the shad fisheries, and in the 1930s he did research on sea water at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He was the author of A Textbook of General Physiology and A Textbook of Biochemistry, both of which were published in several editions. He retired in 1949, and died in Winter Park, Florida, on February 2, 1955.