1950Peer-reviewedWell documented
The Cancer Link Emerges
On the timeline · around 1950 ·
What happened
In 1950, landmark studies — by Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill in Britain and by Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham in the United States — provided the first strong statistical evidence that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
Why it matters
These are foundational studies of modern epidemiology. They began to prove that the century's most popular habit was also a mass killer.
Sources
Related timelines
- Medicine → — The epidemiology that exposed a hidden epidemic