John Simonsen

Sir John Lionel Simonsen (22 July 1884, in Levenshulme, Manchester – 20 February 1957, in London) was an English organic chemist who worked in India.

Simonsen was born in Levenshulme, Manchester where their parents had settled from Denmark (his father Lionel Michael Simonsen was a merchant while his mother Sophie had several relatives in Copenhagen University), he went to a private school in Rusholme and then attended the Manchester Grammar School where he was influenced by the chemistry teacher Francis Jones.

He then went to the University of Manchester, where he obtained his bachelor's degree with top grades in 1904, and a Ph.D. in 1909 as a student of William Henry Perkin Jr.

When Gibson went to England after World War I broke out, Simonsen stayed on in India, where he was an oil controller and advisor to the Indian Munitions Board.

A visit with Robert Robinson to the Caribbean and the US in 1944 led to the establishment of the Microbiology Research Institute in Trinidad and the effective control of mosquitoes on the British Guiana coast, which significantly reduced child mortality.

Jannet was a surgeon and worked for a while as a professor of pathology at Lady Hardinge College, New Delhi at the malaria research station in Simla.