Professor Anthony Swerdlow was educated in medicine at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and holds doctorates in epidemiology from Glasgow, London and Oxford Universities. After junior posts in clinical medicine, he worked in epidemiology in Oxford, Glasgow and London, before he joined the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1987. He was Professor of Epidemiology there from 1996-2000, and then moved to The Institute of Cancer Research, where he is Professor and Head of Section of Epidemiology, Director of the Department of Health Cancer Screening Evaluation Unit, and an honorary consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Professor Swerdlow's research has been in chronic disease epidemiology, mainly on cancer. He has been elected a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow, and the Academy of Medical Sciences. Together with Professor Alan Ashworth he leads the Breakthrough Generations Study, the largest and most comprehensive study into the causes of breast cancer ever undertaken.
