John Corbett McDonald.

In the study of work related diseases, John Corbett McDonald was a pioneering investigator, whose research and techniques in many ways defined occupational epidemiology. His best known role from the mid-1960s onwards—analysing the effects on health of different forms of asbestos—yielded controversy in a highly contentious field. An inspiration to epidemiologists worldwide, McDonald produced research that was “groundbreaking and vital to our understanding of asbestos health effects,” says Bruce Case, a pathology professor who worked with him atMcGill University in Montreal, Canada. Supporters say that McDonald was hurt by allegations that he came under industry influence—correspondence showed that he consistently blocked attempts to interfere with his methods and findings. “I personally think he is someone whose results stand for themselves,” says Anthony Newman Taylor, research and development director at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London. In a highly polarised climate, debate surrounding asbestos was marred by efforts to discredit work of high academic standing, Taylor says. McDonald, who developed the use of tissue indicators of exposure, believed in the “big study.” He created a reliable national system of surveillance for work related respiratory disease (the SWORD system) as a basis for control and simple epidemiological research in the UK. It was first used by chest physicians to report cases of work related disease, then adapted and expanded for use by other clinicians. A vital innovation, it led to a new understanding of the nature and scale of problems concerning occupational disease, says Taylor. “Corbett was an important figure who informed my generation about the essentials of epidemiological based research, helping us understand how it should be done properly,” he says. Belfast born McDonald qualified during the second world war, served as an army medical officer, and worked with Alexander Fleming at St Mary’s Hospital, London. He studied epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and spent two years at Harvard University on a Rockefeller fellowship. In 1951 he joined the Public Health Laboratory Service in Colindale (where he was head of the epidemiological research laboratory from 1960 to 1964) and worked on the epidemiology of viral diseases, particularly influenza. Walter Holland, who studied under McDonald and researched the 1957 flu pandemic, remembers a “superb” teacher whose “tremendous enthusiasm” and “itchy feet” took him to the