Richard Doll

Richard Doll (with Austin Bradford Hill) conducted the British Doctors Study — demonstrating in 1950 a causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. This seminal epidemiology work established that lung cancer, which had become a 20th century epidemic, was predominantly caused by tobacco. It launched the modern era of cancer epidemiology and, ultimately, public health efforts to reduce tobacco use that remain the most impactful cancer prevention intervention in history.