Austin Bradford Hill

Sir Austin Bradford Hill, called: Tony Hill ( born July 8, 1897 London, † 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist, statistician, pioneered the randomized clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, the first, of a link between smoking and lung cancer pointed out. He achieved this with the so-called British Doctors Study, a longitudinal study of the health and smoking habits of British doctors.

Life

Hill was a pilot in World War I, but was discharged because he was suffering from tuberculosis. He earned a degree in economics. In 1922 he started for the Industry Fatigue Research Board to work. There he worked with the medical statistician Major Greenwood together and took courses with Karl Pearson, to improve his knowledge in statistics. As Greenwood accepted a professorship at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the newly founded, Hill went with him and held from 1933 lectures in epidemiology and biostatistics. In 1947 he became professor of medical statistics.

Hill made ​​a remarkable career as a researcher and lecturer and was the author of a successful textbook, Principles of Medical Statistics, but he is mainly famous due to two field studies. He was the statistician at the Medical Research Council Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee. Their study, which examined the use of streptomycin in tuberculosis treatment is generally considered to be the first randomized clinical trial. Pioneer of the use of randomness in agricultural experiments was Ronald Fisher. The second study was a series of studies, who prepared Hill, together with Richard Doll on smoking and lung cancer. The first report was published in 1950 and compared lung cancer patients with matched controls. Doll and Hill began to continue with a long-term study on smoking and health. This was a study of smoking behavior and health of over 30,000 British doctors over several years. Fisher's opinion stood in clear contradiction to the results and methods of the smoking / cancer - work and from 1957 he criticized the work in the press and in scientific papers.

Hill in 1954, including at the request of Fisher, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

Austin Bradford Hills last name was Hill, under which he published. Nevertheless, it is often referenced to him under the name Bradford Hill. From friends, he was called Tony.

He formulated the Bradford Hill criteria for causality in medicine (also known as Hill criteria), which consist of nine key sentences with which a suspected cause - effect relationship in medicine and epidemiology should be examined.

Literature (selection )

  • "Principles of Medical Statistics (1937 ) London: The Lancet, 1937.
  • " Medical Research Council ( 1948) Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee. Streptomycin treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. British Medical Journal 2, 769-83.
  • " Doll R, Hill AB ( 1950) Smoking and carcinoma of the lung Preliminary report, the British Medical Journal, 2: .. 739-748.
  • " Doll R, Hill AB. (1954 ) The mortality of doctors in relation to smoking habits Their. British Medical Journal, 228:1451-5.

Presentations (selection)

  • " Richard Doll (1994 ) Austin Bradford Hill, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 40, 129-140.
  • " Peter Armitage (1991 ) Obituary: . Sir Austin Bradford Hill from 1897 to 1991, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A ( Statistics in Society), 154, 482-484.
  • P. Armitage, W. Bodmer, I. Chalmers, R. Doll, H. Marks Contribute to a Symposium on Bradford Hill and Fisher International Journal of Epidemiology, 32 ( 6), ( 2003), 922-948.
April 18 England London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
90189
de