Miles Weatherall's life spanned four fifths of the 20th century. He occupied prominent positions in both academic life and on the research side of the pharmaceutical industry. After schools in the Oxford area, Weatherall studied medicine at Oriel College on a course that was often threatened with being shortened after the onset of war. In the event, due to delicate ingenuity in interpreting hastily prepared wartime regulations by his tutor, Professor K J Franklin, he did a BSc in pharmacology by thesis in 1941, a year before he studied this subject in the medical course. Immediately after qualifying in 1943, Professor Franklin summoned Weatherall to do a hush-hush report reading the literature and preparing a report on mepacrine, which had been invented in Germany before the war and was thought useful against malaria. This was to be in strict secrecy and was wanted by the malarial research unit set …