Early life Dobb was born on 24 July 1900 in London, the son of Walter Herbert Dobb and the former Elsie Annie Moir. He and his family lived in the London suburb of
Willesden. He was educated at
Charterhouse School in Surrey, an elite
British public school. Dobb was admitted to
Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1919 as an exhibitioner to read economics. He gained firsts in both parts of the economics
tripos in 1921 and 1922 and was admitted to the
London School of Economics for graduate studies In 1920, after Dobb's first year at Pembroke College,
John Maynard Keynes invited him to join the
Political Economy Club, and after graduation Keynes helped him secure his Cambridge position. Dobb was open with students about his communist beliefs. One of them,
Victor Kiernan, later said, "We had no time then to assimilate Marxist theory more than very roughly; it was only beginning to take root in England, although it had one remarkable expounder at Cambridge in Maurice Dobb."
Communism Dobb joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain while in London in 1922. He attracted the interest of British security authorities, and in 1923 he was investigated by
MI5. In the 1930s he was central to the development of the Communist Party at Cambridge University. One of his recruits was
Kim Philby, who later became a high-placed mole within British intelligence. It has been suggested that Dobb was a "talent-spotter" for
Comintern.
Academic career After gaining a PhD in 1924, Dobb returned to Cambridge as university lecturer. The results were eventually published in eleven volumes. In the 1930s he befriended the philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stayed with Dobb and his wife for a period.
Death and legacy Dobb died on 17 August 1976. His students included
Amartya Sen and
Eric Hobsbawm. ==Economic thought==