Peter Boyle

Boyle was born in Glasgow, Scotland and studied statistics at the University of Glasgow (BSC in 1974) and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Epidemiology in 1985 from the University of Glasgow, Faculty of Medicine).

He initially wanted to become a teacher but became fascinated in science. From 1974 to 1977 he worked as a statistician at the University Department of Medicine, Glasgow and the following seven years at the West of Scotland Cancer Surveillance Unit in Glasgow. Here, he developed his lifelong concern over tobacco and tobacco control, and was drawn into epidemiology.

In 1984, he moved to Boston and worked at the Departments of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health and the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute as Instructor and Assistant Professor. During this time Boyle coauthored his first two Lancet publications on cancer mortality in Scotland. In 1986, he returned to Europe and became Scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC, in Lyon, and Group Head of SEARCH (Surveillance of Environmental Aspects Related to Cancer in Humans.

In 1991, he moved to Milan, Italy to become the first chairperson of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Director of the Division of Cancer Control of the European Institute of Oncology, EIO. During this time in 2003, the European Code against Cancer was developed and updated to its current third edition under the leadership of Boyle.

In 2003, he was elected the 4th Director of IARC and moved back to Lyon, a position he held from 2004 to 2008. He stood as a candidate for a second term as Director but was not successful.

In 2009, Boyle was the founding President of a new private research institute, named International Prevention Research Institute in Lyon, France.

Beside his main appointments he held several visiting and/or honorary professorships from different Universities, incl. University of Birmingham (1996–2022), University of Milan (1996–2004), University of Pittsburgh (1996–2002), University of Glasgow (1998–2022), University of Innsbruck (1998), University of Oxford (2003–2022).

Boyle was married and had three daughters (all of whom had distinguished themselves in medicine), two sons-in-law and three grandchildren. He joked that "the stream of strange foreign medical people arriving for dinner over the years was a clear risk factor in their career choices". He was very fond of Chinese restaurants and died on 23 July 2022 after a long illness in Lyon.