Cyril Leslie Oakley was born in 1907 and educated at Portsmouth and Westminster before graduating from the University of London in 1930 in both zoology and medicine. He worked at the Wellcome Research Laboratories from 1934 to 1953, latterly as head of the Department of Immunology and Experimental Pathology. He was appointed Brotherton Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Leeds in 1953, a post from which he retired in 1970. He was a founding fellow of the College of Pathologists and at various times edited the Journal of Pathology and the Journal of Medical Microbiology . He was awarded a D.Sc. by the University of London in 1953, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957 and made a CBE in 1970. He died in 1975. Apart from bacteriology, he was interested in certain marine parasites, in medieval churches and in science fiction literature. He presented his own extensive collection of science fiction literature to the Brotherton Library.
From the guide to the Letters and papers of Cyril Leslie Oakley, 1922-ca.1972, (GB 206 Leeds University Library)
