Brian MacMahon

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Brian MacMahon (born August 23, 1923 in Sheffield , England , † December 5, 2007 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was a British - American epidemiologist . He is best known for his work on hormonal and reproductive risk factors for breast cancer . His work Epidemiologic Methods (further developed as Epidemiology: Principles and Methods ), published with Tom Pugh and Johannes Ipsen , was considered the first textbook of modern epidemiology and for several decades it was the standard work in the United States.

MacMahon obtained a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB, degree in medicine) from the University of Birmingham in 1948 and an MD (1955), a Ph.D. in social medicine and a Masters in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1953 . From 1955 he held a professorship for environmental medicine and health care (Community Health) at the State University of New York before moving to the Harvard School of Public Health in 1958 . In 1962 MacMahon became a US citizen . In 1988 he retired from Harvard , but remained scientifically active. His successor at Harvard was his student Dimitrios Trichopoulos .

MacMahon was the lead author of a large international study that found a link between breast cancer and the age of the woman at her first delivery . He was also able to identify environmental influences as risk factors for pyloric stenosis . Other work looked at the links between diet and cancer or between secondhand smoke and lung cancer . A sensational work that seemed to show a connection between coffee consumption and pancreatic cancer , however, could not be confirmed later.

MacMahon had been a member of the Institute of Medicine since 1973 , and in 1992 he received the Charles S. Mott Prize . He received honorary doctorates from the University of Athens (1974), the State University of New York at Buffalo (1986) and the University of Birmingham (1997).

MacMahon was married, his wife Heidi died in 2001. The couple had four children. Brian MacMahon died on December 5, 2007 in Boston of complications from a stroke .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ General Motors Cancer Research Awards Laureates 1979–1998 (PDF; 106 kB) at aacrjournals.org; accessed on June 24, 2018.
  2. ^ Charles S. Mott Prize (1990–2002) ( Memento of March 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME MacMahon, Brian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American epidemiologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield , England
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 2007
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts