William Hobson Mills, 1873-1959

Although William Hobson Mills was born in London, on 6 July 1873, he was fundamentally a Lincolnshire man. His father, William Henry Mills, was an architect, whose biography is given inLincolnshire Leaders(p. 109), by C. A. Manning Press (Jarrolds 1894), and his mother, of maiden name Emily Wiles Quincey Hobson, was the daughter of William Hobson, the owner of one of the chief business houses in Spalding in Lincolnshire. Moreover, Mills’s parents moved to Spalding in the autumn of 1873, so that he became a Lincolnshire man in every respect other than that of his birthplace. Mills was educated first at Spalding Grammar School and then at Uppingham School. It was at Uppingham in the winter of 1890 that he had an accident whilst tobogganing in the snow, severing an Achilles tendon. Mills remarks in some brief biographical notes that this injury ‘limited his outdoor activities’: this was certainly true during his youth, but those who first met him in his middle age and found how vigorously he cycled and walked in his visits to the fens in search of plants and birds, would scarcely have realized that he suffered any handicap. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in October 1892 and read natural sciences. The injury to his foot, however, caused him to remain at home for the academic year 1893-1894. He returned to Cambridge in October 1894, and obtained a First Class in the Natural Sciences Tripos, Part I, in 1896, and in Part II (Chemistry) in 1897.