Jeremy Morris

By comparing bus conductors with bus drivers and postmen with sorting office staff the epidemiologist Jerry Morris showed that exercise prevented heart attacks. He also showed the relationship between deprivation and infant mortality. In old age he did equally careful research to determine the income that elderly people need to remain healthy. He was awarded a CBE, though not the knighthood that many colleagues thought he deserved. He was a spectacular practitioner of his own research findings, walking, running, or swimming until his death from pneumonia aged 99.

He had ebullience, prodigious energy, moral principles, few vices, wit, and a talent for friendship. He devised innovative methods, said his colleague Eve Alberman: “Together with colleagues he devised I think the first validated measures of diet and exercise derived from respondents’ histories. His sampling techniques were brilliant and economical of resources. He had the highest possible standards of excellence in research and ensured that all his department’s studies reached them.”