ScHARR Pemberton Lectures

The Pemberton Lectures are in honour of Professor John Pemberton, a much esteemed colleague of several in ScHARR who died in 2010 aged 97.

In 1933 whilst a medical student at University College London, John Pemberton and some fellow students organised first aid and relief for the Jarrow Hunger Marchers. Concerned by their condition he wrote an article on “Malnutrition in England” linking malnutrition to the level of unemployment benefits, and thus started a career and lifelong concern for social medicine and public health.

After completion of his medical training, John Pemberton worked from 1937 to 1939 with Sir John Boyd Orr on a nutrition survey of some 5000 British children. The original records, now the Boyd Orr cohort, are still being used today to investigate associations of childhood diet and health with adult chronic diseases.

In 1941 he started work as a medical tutor in the University of Sheffield Medical School working on vitamin deficiency with Professor Sir Hans Krebs (Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology, 1953). Whilst working at Harvard during 1954 – 1955, John Pemberton met Harold Willard, and together they started a club that later became the International Epidemiological Association. Two years later he helped found the Society for Social Medicine.

Professor John Pemberton, MB BS (London), MD (London), FRCP, DPH, FFPH. Professor and Head of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Queen’s University, Belfast (1958 - 1976); Medical Tutor (1941), Senior Lecturer (1946) and Reader (1955) in Social Medicine in the University of Sheffield. Honorary Lecturer in Public Health Medicine, University of Sheffield (1985).