Rex Malcolm Chaplin Dawson FRS[1] (1924–2021) was a British biochemist whose research was primarily dedicated to the study of phospholipids.

His career was based at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, starting in 1955, in the newly formed biochemistry department.

[2] He gained a scholarship to University College London (UCL) and was awarded first class honours for his degree in applied and theoretical physics in 1945.

Their two children, Hazel Anne and John Rex, were born in Bristol in 1947 and Cardiff in 1951 respectively: Emily Elizabeth Dawson died on 29 September 2005.

In 2009, Rex Malcom Chaplin Dawson married June Margaret Buschman (née Pepper), who had lost her husband Petrus in 2004.