Michael John Peckham (2 August 1935 – 13 August 2021) was a British oncologist and artist. As a cancer physician he is best known for his contribution to the treatment of

testicular cancer Testicular cancer is cancer that develops in the testicles, a part of the male reproductive system. Symptoms may include a lump in the testicle, or swelling or pain in the scrotum. Treatment may result in infertility. Risk factors include an u ...

. His paintings were first exhibited in 1962 and he showed in numerous mixed and solo exhibitions. He was born in

Panteg Panteg ( cy, Pant-teg) is a large village and community in the county borough of Torfaen, Wales. It is adjacent to Griffithstown, between the towns of Cwmbran and Pontypool. The village is best known for Panteg Steel Works, which closed in 2004. ...

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( cy, Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south-east of Wales. The name derives from the historic county of the same name; the modern county covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county. The largest town is Abergavenny, with ...

, read Natural Sciences at

St Catharine's College, Cambridge St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre of Camb ...

and qualified as a doctor from

UCL Medical School UCL Medical School is the medical school of University College London (UCL) and is located in London, United Kingdom. The School provides a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programmes and also has a medical educatio ...

. He was called up for military service and spent two years as a captain in the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps a ...

. He was married to

Catherine Peckham Catherine S. Peckham ( King) FFPHM is a British paediatrician. Peckham was the first Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology in the UK, and established the Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the UCL Institute of Child Health ...

, daughter of Alexander King.

Medicine and Science

After working with Maurice Tubiana at the

Institut Gustave Roussy Gustave Roussy is the first leader cancer-research hospital in Europe and ranked among the top 3 best specialized hospitals in the world . It is a centre for high quality patient care, research and teaching. It is highly-known for the treatment of ...

in Paris on the cell biology of lymphoma, he joined the

Institute of Cancer Research The Institute of Cancer Research (the ICR) is a public research institute and a member institution of the University of London in London, United Kingdom, specialising in oncology. It was founded in 1909 as a research department of the Royal Mar ...

and

Royal Marsden Hospital The Royal Marsden Hospital (RM) is a specialist cancer treatment hospital in London based in Kensington and Chelsea, next to the Royal Brompton Hospital, in Fulham Road with a second site in Belmont, close to Sutton Hospital, High Down and D ...

in London. He was appointed to a Chair in 1973 and built up a team that specialised in

and

Hodgkin’s lymphoma Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a type of lymphoma, in which cancer originates from a specific type of white blood cell called lymphocytes, where multinucleated Reed–Sternberg cells (RS cells) are present in the patient's lymph nodes. The condition w ...

. He founded the British Oncological Association in 1985, co-founded the European Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in 1981 and was a founder and first Chairman of the

Federation of European Cancer Societies The Federation of European Cancer Societies (FECS), founded in 1981, was an international non-profit association that co-ordinated collaboration between European societies active in different fields of cancer research, prevention and treatment with ...

(FECS) which has since evolved into the

European Cancer Organisation The European Cancer Organisation is a not-for-profit federation of 41 Member Societies working in cancer at a European level, together with 20 European Patient Advisory Committee members. The Organisation is dedicated to convening oncology prof ...

. He was Vice-Chair of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now

Cancer Research UK Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...

) from 1986 to 1991. In 1986 he became Director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, a school of the University of London comprising seven postgraduate medical institutes. In 1991 he became the first Director of Research and Development for the National Health Service (NHS) and Department of Health. Through the new programme the

Cochrane Collaboration Cochrane (previously known as the Cochrane Collaboration) is a British international charitable organisation formed to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health profess ...

was launched and the basis laid for the

National Institute for Clinical Excellence The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care in England that publishes guidelines in four areas: * the use of health technologies withi ...

. From 1997 to 2000 he was Director of the School of Public Policy at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. In 2000 he was appointed by the then Secretary of State for Education,

David Blunkett David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, (born 6 June 1947) is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of the House of Lords since 2015, and previously served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough ...

, to chair the new National Educational Research Forum. In 2000 he chaired the Foresight Panel "Healthcare in 2020" for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Office of Science and Technology.

Art

Michael Peckham's paintings were first shown at Bangor University in 1962. This was followed by an exhibition with William Gear in 1964 at the Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford. During the 1980s and 1990s he exhibited his work at the Christopher Hull Gallery. His solo exhibition at the Millinery Works Gallery opened on 11 September 2001. He exhibited with

Richard Demarco Richard Demarco CBE (born 9 July 1930 in Edinburgh) is a Scottish artist and promoter of the visual and performing arts. Early life He was born at 9 Grosvenor Street in Edinburgh on 9 July 1930 the son of Carmino Demarco and his wife Elizabet ...

in Edinburgh and showed work in 2001 in the Traveling Exhibition “70 over 2000: the Road to Meikle Seggie”. He worked with Richard Demarco to develop an artistic event at the centre of the European Conference on Clinical Oncology (

ECCO Ecco or ECCO may refer to: Art and entertainment * ''Ecco the Dolphin'' (series), a series of action-adventure science fiction video games ** ''Ecco the Dolphin'', a 1992 video game * Ecco (''Gotham''), a TV series character Organizations ...

) at the South Bank in London in 1989. “Death, Life, Regeneration” included work by

Helen Chadwick Helen Chadwick (18 May 1953 – 15 March 1996) was a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist. In 1987, she became one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypic ...

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

and

Paul Neagu Paul Neagu (1938-2004) was a Romanian artist living in England who worked in diverse media such as drawing, sculpture, performance art and watercolor. He died on 16 June 2004 in London. His influences included Cubism, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin ...

. The Cantata “Bavarian Gentians” commissioned for the occasion from

Hugh Wood Hugh Wood (27 June 1932 – 14 August 2021) was a British composer. Biography Wood was born in Parbold, Lancashire and grew up in a musical family; while still a teenager, he was encouraged by the composer Alan Bush. He says that his "earlies ...

received its first performance conducted by

Richard Hickox Richard Sidney Hickox (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music. Early life Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family. After attending the Royal Gram ...

at this event. The two aspects of his career came together when thirty five small drawings made in the clinical notes of his patients were shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2004 under the title “Treatments”. A vivid account of the mutual influence of art and oncology in his work can be found in an essay published in the Lancet in 2017 "One Life".

Honours

*Knighted for services to medicine, 1995 *Doctor honoris causa, Université de Franche-Comté Besançon, 1991 *Hon DSc, Loughborough University of Technology, 1992 *Doctor honoris causa, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1993 *Foreign associate member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

Washington USA 1994 *Honorary Fellow, University College London, 1995 *Hon DSc, University of Exeter, 1996 *Honorary Fellow St Catharine’s College Cambridge, 1998 *Founding Fellow

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its mission is to adv ...

, 1998 *Hon DSc (Medicine), University of London (Institute of Cancer Research), 2007

External links

Home - Michael Peckham

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peckham, Michael 20th-century English medical doctors British oncologists People from Panteg Alumni of University College London Royal Army Medical Corps officers Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Knights Bachelor 1935 births 2021 deaths Members of the National Academy of Medicine