In the Second World War, only military action killed more Britons than cigarettes. The tobacco industry wouldn't accept it - and the government couldn't afford to. But in Oxford, one scientist was about to prove the cancer link that changed the course of medical history.

The Observer, April 2005

It is hard to say precisely how many lives Sir Richard Doll has saved in his career, but a million may be considered a conservative estimate. The true figure probably lies in the steel filing cabinets in his small office at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, or among the stacks of medical journals that surround him, soon to be packed in crates and transported to a sparkling new glass and concrete home in a different part of the city. Sir Richard does not plan to visit the new building very often - he doesn't drive, and the new place isn't within walking distance. There is, therefore, a certain irony in the fact that the unofficial retirement, at the age of 92, of one of the greatest medical detectives in the world will be caused by the opening of the building that will proudly bear his name.
The Richard Doll Building, in Headington, on the outskirts of Oxford, will house several research and medical departments whose work over the past half-century has been significantly influenced by Professor Doll's endeavours, not least the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit. Professor Doll did not set out in life to be a medical statistician in search of the causes of disease, but he will leave the profession as its most famous British practitioner. He has studied diet, radon gas, HIV, ulcers and radioactivity, but he will be widely remembered for just one thing: as the man who proved that smoking causes lung cancer.
He did not achieve this feat alone, and it has taken 50 years to complete the study, but his work bears comparison with the greatest discoveries of the modern age. Because the detrimental effects of smoking are largely self-inflicted, and because 90 per cent of lung cancers are caused by smoking, Professor Doll's work amounts to a cure, albeit one notoriously difficult to self-administer.

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