[2] Norman Bleehen was born on 24 February 1930 in Manchester to an Orthodox Jewish family.
[3][6] In 1957, Bleehen began his national service with the Royal Army Medical Corps.
[3][2][4][6] After being demobilised in 1959, Bleehen rejoined Oxford University's department of Regius professor of medicine.
Under his direction, the department developed into one of the UK's top academic oncology research units.
In 1987, he became Vice President and was a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.
[1] In the summer of 1969, he met Tirza Loebe, a PhD student, while he was doing his research at Middlesex Hospital, and they got married on 14 December 1969.