John Richard Thomas Colley was among that early postwar cohort of medical graduates whose experience of national service gave them extra time and experience to consider career preferences. His enthusiasm was for epidemiology, and he was awarded a doctorate for an evaluation of infant lung function in epidemiological field studies in 1969.
Predominant population health questions in the 1960s concerned the effects of smoking and atmospheric pollution, and John Colley was among the pioneers who developed clinical epidemiological measures for use in population studies to investigate the natural history of disease and the trajectories of functional change. His measures of childhood respiratory function helped to make that possible, and …