Peter Pharoah

Peter Oswald Derrick Pharoah (May 1934 – 23 October 2021) was a British public health professor at the University of Liverpool from 1979 until 1997.

He was known for his work on people with cretinism (as the condition was then known) in Papua New Guinea and cerebral palsy in the United Kingdom.

He studied at Palmer's School in Grays, Essex, before studying at St Mary's Hospital Medical School at Imperial College London, where he met his wife and worked in a team with Sir Roger Bannister, an athlete and neurologist.

[4] When working with villagers in the Jimi Valley, Pharoah ran a clinical trial whereby he injected iodised oil into women who were of child-bearing age and found out that cretinism (as congenital iodine deficiency syndrome was known at the time) was caused by iodine deficiency during pregnancy; this led to iodised salt being the only salt imported and thus the disease was eradicated.

[2][4] In 1972, he moved back to the UK and became a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before becoming a professor of public health at the University of Liverpool in 1979.