Michael Rutter | |
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Born | Michael Llewellyn Rutter 15 August 1933 |
Fields | Child psychiatry |
Institutions | |
Alma mater | University of Birmingham Medical School |
Thesis | Illness in parents and children (1963) |
Notable awards | |
Website kclpure |
Sir Michael Llewellyn Rutter CBE FRS FRCP FRCPsych FMedSci (born 15 August 1933) was the first professor of child psychiatry in the United Kingdom. He has been described as the "father of child psychology". Currently he is professor of developmental psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London and consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, a post he has held since 1966. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Rutter as the 68th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Rutter was the oldest child born to Winifred (née Barber) and Llewellyn Rutter. He was born in Lebanon where his father was a doctor, but moved back to England at an early age. In 1940, at the age of 7, amid fears of a German invasion, Rutter was evacuated, with his younger sister, to North America.
He attended the Moorestown Friends School in New Jersey, USA. Later he attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and then Bootham School in York, from where he continued his studies at the University of Birmingham Medical School.
Rutter set up the Medical Research Council (UK) Child Psychiatry Research Unit in 1984 and the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre ten years later, being Honorary Director of both until October 1998. He was Deputy Chairman of the Wellcome Trust from 1999 to 2004, and was a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation from 1992 to 2008.