Sir Donald Acheson Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire was a British physician and epidemiologist who served as Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1991.
Background
He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father Captain Malcolm King Acheson, Military Cross, Doctor of Medicine was a doctor who specialised in public health, and his mother Dorothy Josephine née Rennoldson was the daughter of a Tyneside ship builder.
Education
He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Brasenose College, Oxford (Master of Arts, Doctor of Medicine, Fellow 1968, Honorary Fellow 1991).
Career
In 1955, in an article in the Lancet, Acheson coined the term Benign Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Master of Engineering) to describe a number of outbreaks of an infectious disease. From 1957 until 1968 he worked at the University of Oxford, as Fellow of University College (1957-1959), medical tutor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Radcliffe Infirmary (1960), Director of the Oxford Record Linkage Study and Unit of Clinical Epidemeology (1962-1968), and May Reader in Medicine (1965). His association with the University of Southampton began in 1963 when he was appointed Professor of Clinical Epidemiology in the university and Honorary Consultant Physician at Royal South Hampshire Hospital.
He held both positions until 1983.
In 1968 he became the first Dean of the new Medical School at the University of Southampton, serving in that capacity until 1978. In 1977 he was Visiting Professor at McMaster University.
From 1979 until 1983 he was Director of the Medical Research Council Unit in Environmental Epidemiology. He then became Chief Medical Officer (1983–1991), serving the British government in the Department of Health, Department of Social Security, Department of Education and Science, and Home Office.
After leaving office as Chief Medical Officer he held positions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London.
In 1997 he was commissioned by the new Blair government to chair the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health, which led to the publication of the eponymous Acheson Report. In 1998 he delivered the Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians. Acheson was President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland (1979) and the British Medical Association (1996-1997).
He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians), Royal College of Surgeons of England (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists), Faculty of Public Health Medicine (FFPHM), and Faculty of Occupational Medicine (FFOM).
He held honorary doctorates from the University of Southampton (Doctor of Medicine 1984), University of Newcastle (Doctor of Science 1984), Queen"s University of Belfast (Doctor of Medicine 1987), University of Aberdeen (Doctor of Laws 1988), University of Nottingham (Doctor of Medicine 1989), University of Birmingham (Doctor of Medicine 1991), University of Salford (Doctor of Science 1991), and University of Ulster (Doctor of Science 1994). One Doctor"s Odyssey – the Social Lesion (2007). (Abramis Academic Press).