Donald Acheson

Sir Donald Acheson KBE
Cover of autobiography (2007)
Chief Medical Officer for England
In office 1 January 1983 – 31 December 1990
Preceded by	Henry Yellowlees
Succeeded by	Kenneth Calman
Personal details
Born	(1926-09-17)17 September 1926 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died	10 January 2010(2010-01-10) (aged 83)
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Profession	Epidemiologist

Sir (Ernest) Donald Acheson KBE (17 September 1926 – 10 January 2010) was a British physician and epidemiologist who served as Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1991. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

His father Captain Malcolm King Acheson, MC, MD was a doctor who specialised in public health, and his mother Dorothy Josephine née Rennoldson was the daughter of a Tyneside ship builder. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Brasenose College, Oxford (MA, DM, Fellow 1968, Honorary Fellow 1991). His elder brother, Roy Acheson, (also Merchiston and Brasenose alumnus) is Emeritus Professor of Community Medicine in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Churchill College.

Having qualified in 1951, Acheson practised at Middlesex Hospital and then entered the Royal Air Force Medical Branch, achieving the rank of Acting Squadron Leader (1953–55).

From 1957 until 1968 he worked at the University of Oxford, as Fellow of University College (1957–59), medical tutor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Radcliffe Infirmary (1960), Director of the Oxford Record Linkage Study and Unit of Clinical Epidemeology (1962–68), and May Reader in Medicine (1965).