Frank Chance was born at Highgate, the fourth son of Robert Lucas Chance, a Birmingham glass manufacturer. After two years in his father’s factory, he studied chemistry for a year at King’s College, London, and for two further years at Paris and Berlin. He went up to Trinity, Cambridge, in 1850, and thence, having taken his B.A. in 1854, to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital for his clinical training, graduating as M.B. in 1854. While at Cambridge he gained the Tyrwhitt Hebrew scholarship, and the study of languages became the chief interest of his life. He translated Virchow’s Cellular Pathology, at the author’s request, in 1863, and edited H. H. Bernard’s Commentary on the Book of Job in 1864. A year later he retired from practice. From 1875 to 1884 he was a member of the committee for the Revised Version of the Old Testament. He was a fluent linguist in German, French and Italian, and familiar with several other languages. He married in 1857 Jane Susan Katharine, daughter of James Brewster of Huntingdon, and had one daughter. He died at Nice.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1897; Times, 29 July 1897; Private correspondence, R.C.P. Library; Al.Cantab., ii, 7]