Sir Richard Doll

Fifty years ago today the launch of the Royal College of Physicians’ report, ‘Smoking and Health’, brought the dangers of smoking to the attention of the public at large. So began a major shift in attitude to smoking: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17264442

The scientific basis of the report had been laid over ten years earlier by the epidemiologist, Richard Doll (1912-2005), who, along with Austin Bradford Hill, established the link between smoking and lung cancer. Doll was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford from 1969 to 1979 and was instrumental in the founding of Green College (now Green Templeton College) as a graduate college specialising in medicine. His papers are held by the Wellcome Library, London.

See also Conrad Keating’s Smoking Kills: The Revolutionary Life of Richard Doll (Oxford, 2009).