Sir Richard Doll died earlier this year at age 92. The most celebrated epidemiologist of the 20th century, Doll is best known for his work on smoking and lung cancer, but there was so much more to his career.
His father was a general practitioner in London, and it was from St. Thomas's that Doll himself graduated in Medicine in 1937. Even as a student, he showed his interest in epidemiologic and statistical tools, publishing on the need for proper analysis and statistical testing in population studies of disease.
Later, Doll served in the Royal Medical Corps in France and the Middle East throughout the Second World War. He began his research career at the Middlesex Hospital, studying occupational factors in the development of peptic ulceration. He married Dr. Joan Faulkner around this time, and it was she who had been instrumental in his getting the position at the Middlesex....
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