Professor Sir Richard Peto is the featured guest on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific
Professor Sir Richard Peto, a Governing Body Fellow of Green Templeton College, has spoken to BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific about his life and work.
The Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford was the featured guest on Tuesday 9 April.
In a fascinating interview, he took The Life Scientific host Professor Jim Al-Khalili on a journey through his early years, education and famous studies.
Along with colleagues including the late Sir Richard Doll, the first Warden of Green College, Peto helped to establish unequivocally the link between tobacco and disease, especially cancer.
As Al-Khalili noted, effectively communicating that link to the public saw the UK going from having the world’s worst death rate from smoking to the world’s biggest decrease.
In the interview, Peto spoke about his initial meeting with Doll, their working relationship and the impact of their research. He also discussed his study with Alan Lopez at the World Health Organisation, predicting a billion people globally would die from tobacco-related diseases this century in comparison to 100 million last century, and working with Professor Sir Rory Collins in the Clinical Trial Service Unit.
When asked whether his personality naturally suited close working relationships with others like Doll and Collins, Peto said: “People have intellectual ancestors. [Austin Bradford] Hill was the sort of godfather of Doll. Doll was the godfather of lots of epidemiologists. Then Rory came and joined me and has now far succeeded me in the range of things he’s doing. That’s just the way things are. It isn’t an area for lone geniuses.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Peto spoke about other aspects of his life and work, including his interest in – and the importance of – big data analysis and randomised trials.
The Life Scientific is a weekly BBC Radio 4 podcast in which each episode is dedicated to the life and work of one living scientist.
