Constantine John Philip Ionides

The Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published a summary of his dozen experiences with snakebite, only one of which Ionides treated with antivenom. Mark O'Shea credited Ionides with inspiring his own career as a herpetologist, and Jonathan Kingdon acknowledges his influence. Even in 2020, scholars such as evolutionary biologist Richard Shine and Stephen Spawls, author of The Dangerous Snakes of Africa, cite Ionides as a "pioneering East African naturalist" and use his field notebooks for analysis half a century after his death.

Peter Matthiessen's 1981 book Sand Rivers (ikkustrated by Hugo van Lawick) describes a foot safari into Selous, guided by Brian Nicholson, who had apprenticed under Ionides and succeeded him as warden in charge there. "Iodine" and the creation of the modern game reserve feature in many anecdotes. Ionides is referred to in several books by Peter Hathaway Capstick. and is one of four European men profiled in his 1992 The African Adventurers: A Return to the Silent Places.

He was the subject of two full-length biographies. The first, Snake Man: The Story of CJP Ionides by Alan Wykes, was judged the author's most successful work. It was published by Hamish Hamilton, founded by his friend from Rugby Jamie Hamilton (publisher). The second, Life with Ionides by Margaret Lane, describes the months she spent at his spartan home in the bush, participating in his snake hunts. His own autobiography appeared in 1965, titled Mambas and Man Eaters: A Hunter's Story.

Several reptiles are named after him. The Liwale round-snouted worm lizard was given its official Linnean name, Loveridgea ionidesii, in honor of Arthur Loveridge and Bobby Ionides; the name was suggested by James Clarence Battersby of the British Museum (Nautral History). Loveridge proposed the binomial Brookesia ionidesi for the zomba pygmy chameleon (officially the Rieppeleon brachyurus). Loveridge also recognised his colleague in the name of a subspecies of the Katanga purple-glossed snake (Amblyodipsas katangensis ionidesi), and the Kilwa sharp-snouted worm lizard (Ancylocranium ionidesi). In 1964 the Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent named the Black-throated monitor, a subspecies of the monitor lizard, Varanus exanthematicus ionidesi. Donald George Broadley and Van Wallach in 2007 named a newly described species of blind snake Leptotyphlops ionidesi, now Myriopholis ionidesi.

He attended crammers, finally getting in to Sandhurst military college in 1919, determined to follow an army career. In 1922 he was posted to the South Wales Borderers, whose arrival in India gave Ionides his first opportunity to study snakes. His soldiering took him to East Africa when he was in his mid-20s, and he rarely left the continent. He started by poaching during leaves of absence from soldiering, and learned to hunt big game of all sorts, including elephants (see Elephant hunting in Kenya). He left the army once his hunting became financially self-supporting, becoming a so-called white hunter, which for the most part involved guiding wealthy Americans. His specimens can be found in the collections of the British Museum, the National Museums of Kenya (in his day known as the Coryndon Memorial Museum), and Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Constantine John Philip Ionides (1901–1968), nicknamed "Bobby" and then "Iodine", was a British-born naturalist and herpetologist known as the Snake Man of British East Africa. His decades as game warden (conservation officer) led to him being described as the father of the Selous Game Reserve in what is now Tanzania.

Constantine John Philip Ionides, known as "Bobby" from early childhood, was born in Hove, a suburb of Brighton, on the south coast of England. His father, Theodore (1866–1936), was a doctor from a well-established Anglo-Greek family, whose own father, Constantine Alexander Ionides, was a prominent art collector. His mother Aikaterini (1874–1960) was the daughter of a physician, John Cavafy (1838–1901), who worked with his own father, a Turkish merchant, in managing his art collection; the Cavafy family were important collectors of the paintings of Whistler. She spent some of her childhood living with this grandfather, who was the favourite uncle of Constantine P. Cavafy, held by some to be the greatest Greek poet since ancient times Aikaterini's mother, Bobby's grandmother, came from another prosperous Anglo-Greek family, one of three sisters memorialised in Ralli Hall. The young Bobby grew up in a town full of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.