Richard Doll

Sir
Richard Doll
CH OBE FRS
Richard Doll in 2002
Born
William Richard Shaboe Doll

(1912-10-28)28 October 1912
Hampton, Middlesex, England
Died24 July 2005(2005-07-24) (aged 92)
Oxford, England
Alma materSt Thomas's Hospital Medical School
Known forEpidemiology of smoking Armitage–Doll model
AwardsGairdner Foundation International Award (1970)
Buchanan Medal (1972)
Charles S. Mott Prize (1979)
Royal Medal (1986)
Prince Mahidol Award (1992)
Shaw Prize (2004)
Gold Medal for Radiation Protection (2004)
King Faisal International Prize (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysiology
Epidemiology

Sir William Richard Shaboe Doll CH OBE FRS (28 October 1912 – 24 July 2005)[1] was a British physician who became an epidemiologist in the mid-20th century and made important contributions to that discipline. He was a pioneer in research linking smoking to health problems. With Ernst Wynder, Bradford Hill and Evarts Graham, he was credited with being the first to prove that smoking increased the risk of lung cancer and heart disease. (German studies had suggested a link as early as the 1920s but were forgotten or ignored until the 1990s.)[2][3]

He also carried out pioneering work on the relationship between radiation and leukaemia as well as that between asbestos and lung cancer, and alcohol and breast cancer. He however, initially for many years, stood in opposition to research done by Alice Stewart which connected radiation exposure of pregnant mothers to development of leukaemia in their children due to her 'questionable' analysis.[4][5] On 28 June 2012, he was the subject of an episode of The New Elizabethans, a series broadcast on BBC Radio Four to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, dealing with 60 public figures from her reign.[6]

  1. ^ Peto, R.; Beral, V. (2010). "Sir Richard Doll CH OBE. 28 october 1912 -- 24 July 2005". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 56: 63–83. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2010.0019. S2CID 59083063.
  2. ^ Proctor, Robert (1999). The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691070513.
  3. ^ Proctor, Robert N (2001). "Commentary: Schairer and Schöniger's forgotten tobacco epidemiology and the Nazi quest for racial purity". International Journal of Epidemiology. 30 (1): 31–34. doi:10.1093/ije/30.1.31. PMID 11171846.
  4. ^ Stewart, Alice; Kneale, George (1978). "Low-dose radiation". The Lancet. 312 (8083): 262–263. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(78)91772-5. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 79054. S2CID 35987772. [our] approach requires either much larger doses than were encountered in the Hanford study or a much larger data base
  5. ^ Martin, John (November 1980). "On cancer and radiation". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 36 (9). Chicago, IL: 59. The 90 percent confidence interval is bounded by the range from 380 to 448 cancer deaths. Thus 442 deaths is not a statistically significant deviation from the average expectation.…Kneale and Stewart do not claim their results to be statistically significant
  6. ^ "The New Elizabethans, Richard Doll". BBC. 28 June 2012. Retrieved 29 June 2012.