Michael Abercrombie FRS[1] (14 August 1912 – 28 May 1979) was a British cell biologist and embryologist.
Michael was born at Ryton near Dymock in Gloucestershire on 14 August 1912, the third son of Lascelles Abercrombie, poet and critic, and his wife, Catherine, daughter of Owen Gwatkin, a surgeon at Grange-over-Sands.
In 1931 he entered Queen's College, University of Oxford, to study Zoology under Professor Gavin de Beer, supported by a Hastings scholarship.
He was classified as unfit for military service in the second world war and moved to University of Oxford to work on wound healing and nerve regeneration until 1943, then returned to Birmingham.
Particularly successful projects were the co-authored Penguin Dictionary of Biology in 1951 (with co-author C. J. Hickman and others, reaching 11th edition in 2004) and the Penguin New Biology series (1945 - 1960), co-edited with his wife (writing as M. L. Johnson), and from 1953 with botanist Gordon Elliott Fogg.