Background
Booth was born in 1924 in Farnham, Surrey. His father Lionel Booth is credited as the inventor of the telephoto lens.
director historian president Navy doctor
Booth was born in 1924 in Farnham, Surrey. His father Lionel Booth is credited as the inventor of the telephoto lens.
He was brought up in Wensleydale, Yorkshire and attended Sedbergh school. A Navy doctor encouraged him to study medicine, so he enrolled at Street Andrews University on demobilisation and graduated in 1951, serving as a houseman at Dundee before moving to the postgraduate medical school at Hammersmith hospital in London.
He served as a frogman in the Royal Navy from 1942. He was also director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park and research director at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He was president of the British Medical Association from 1986 to 1987 and president of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1988 to 1990.
He published four books and 50 papers on the history of medicine, and played a leading role in the founding of The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group.
A ward at the Hammersmith Hospital is named after him and looks after gastroenterology patients.