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Biography
Julian Peto is an English statistician and cancer epidemiologist. He is Cancer Research UK Chair of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Cancer Research. Before he took up his current post in 1983 he worked as a research scientist under Sir Richard Doll at the University of Oxford.
He was educated at Taunton's School in Southampton, Balliol College, Oxford and Imperial College, London. His brother Richard Peto, with whom he has published work in mathematical statistics (see the logrank test), is also a distinguished epidemiologist.
Peto has been a panelist on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Board. His research interests include the epidemiology of asbestos induced cancers and the epidemiology of breast and cervical cancers. He also leads the VIDAL, Vitamin D and longevity study.