Michael Marmot: Putting health inequality on the map

Early calling

Literature has been a lifelong passion for Marmot. In his first year as a house officer in Sydney, where he gained his medical degree, he did one year of an English literature degree in his spare time, turning up to lectures in blood stained shoes with his bleeper in his pocket. It was a break from clinical medicine, he says, and a diversion that reflects the path his career took.

Born in north London, Marmot grew up in Sydney “because it wasn’t China.” His father, who had been in Shanghai during the 1920s, returned there in 1948 after the war intending to set up in business. On arriving there, however, he decided that China held too few prospects and moved on to Sydney, where his family joined him.

Marmot was attracted to medicine because it offered further study …