Doll, Richard (1912–2005)

Richard Doll qualified in medicine in 1937, graduating from St. Thomas Hospital in London, but his main epidemiological work began when he joined the staff of the Medical Research Council in London following service in World War II. More than any other person, he was responsible for establishing smoking as the main cause of lung cancer. His early case-control study of the question with Austin Bradford Hill was not the first such study, but he and Hill followed up some 40,000 British doctors after collecting details of their smoking habits, a cohort study that was unique in its regular updating of the subjects’ smoking habits. The strong dose-response relation between lung cancer and smoking, together with the high standard and careful assessment of the study's findings, played a major part in convincing people of a causal relation, and in turn helped to change smoking habits. Thus, in 1950, 80% of the men in Britain smoked, but by 2000, this had declined to less than 30%.

Doll was one of the first epidemiologists to investigate the health effects of irradiation. His follow-up with Court Brown in 1957 of 14,000 ankylosing spondylitis patients treated with radiation brought the first independent confirmation, after the report on atomic bomb survivors, that radiation could cause leukemia. The study has since been a major source of data on the dose-response relation of radiation and cancer. In 1954, long before the relevant advances in molecular biology, Doll and Peter Armitage adduced evidence for the multistage nature of carcinogenesis.

He was also responsible for classic studies of asbestos and of nickel refining, being the first to show a significant excess of lung cancer among asbestos workers. He also collaborated with others on the side effects of oral contraceptives.

In 1969, he was appointed to Britain's premier medical chair, the Regius Professorship of Medicine at Oxford, which brought new attention to the subject of epidemiology. He had a wide influence on the progress of the science and was extensively consulted, for example, in the setting up of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). He was an early promoter of clinical trials and of cancer registries and was an author of the first compendia of worldwide cancer incidence data, Cancer Incidence in Five Continents.

Apart from his contributions to science and health, Richard Doll is commemorated in Oxford by Green College, where he was the first warden, and by the two flourishing units that he helped found at Oxford University, the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit and the Clinical Trial Service Unit.