Doll, Richard

Time Period: 2005

Sir Richard Doll, with Bradford Hill, carried out classic research on lung cancer and tobacco smoking. His productive investigations on the role of smoking, culture, and disease continued over the years, solo and in concert with Richard Peto at Oxford. They demonstrated and promulgated the method of correction for regression-dilution bias in epidemiological surveys, a major contribution to strengthening the evidence. They, along with Ancel Keys, were the major early proponents of cultural exposures determining large population differences in common diseases, thus, their ultimate preventability.