Abstract
Sir Richard Doll, who died in July aged 92, was an
epidemiologist who demonstrated one of the most important
causality relationships of the past century: the association
between smoking and lung cancer. In collaboration with
Sir Austin Bradford Hill, Doll conducted first a case control
study and then a prospective cohort study of British doctors,
comparing rates of lung cancer amongst smokers and nonsmokers.
Although only a small number of deaths occurred
in the first few years of the cohort study, Doll demonstrated
a clear and significant increase in mortality from lung
cancer as smoking increased and a smaller but significant
increase in coronary thrombosis. In the 1950s, when 80
per cent of the British population smoked, the implications
of these findings were very important.
