Chris Whitty

In March 2020, Whitty took a leading role in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, alongside Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

Public lectures outlining his views on tackling current challenges in medicine and public health include Gresham lectures and the 2017 Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians.

From 2016 to 2019, he was Chief Scientific Adviser and head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. From 2017 to 2018, he was interim Government Chief Scientific Adviser and head of the science and engineering profession in government, during which period Novichok, the military nerve agent, was responsible for the 2018 Salisbury poisonings.

Whitty was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2015 New Year Honours. He is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

From 2009 to 2015, he was Chief Scientific Adviser and director of research for the Department for International Development (DFID). During this time, he co-authored along with Neil Ferguson an article in Nature titled "Infectious disease: Tough choices to reduce Ebola transmission", explaining the UK government's response to Ebola in Sierra Leone, including the proposal to build and support centres where people could self-isolate voluntarily if they suspected that they could have the disease.

Whitty is a practising National Health Service (NHS) consultant physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and Gresham Professor of Physic at Gresham College. Until becoming CMO he was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the LSHTM £31 million for malaria research in Africa. At the time, Whitty was the principal investigator for the ACT Consortium, which conducted the research programme.

Christopher John MacRae Whitty CB FRCP FFPH FMedSci (born 21 April 1966) is an English physician and epidemiologist who is Chief Medical Officer for England (CMO), Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government, Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) at the Department of Health and Social Care and Head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Christopher John MacRae Whitty was born in Gloucester on 21 April 1966, the first of four sons born to Kenneth and Susannah Whitty. He spent his early years in northern Nigeria. His father was Deputy Director of the British Council in Athens; he was killed in 1984 when Whitty was 18. Whitty was sent back to the UK for his schooling, and was educated at Windlesham House School and Malvern College. Following this, he was educated at Pembroke College, the University of Oxford (BA in Physiology, 1988), Wolfson College (BM BCh in Medicine, 1991), London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (DTM&H in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 1996; MSc in Epidemiology, 1996), Northumbria University (LLM in Medical Law, 2005), Heriot-Watt University (MBA in Business Administration, 2010), and the Open University (Dip Econ in Economics).

During the outbreak, BBC health editor Hugh Pym called him "the official who will probably have the greatest impact on our everyday lives of any individual policymaker in modern times". The Guardian' s sketch writer, John Crace, described him as "the Geek-in-Chief, whom everyone now regards as the country's de facto prime minister". At the same time, he was compared to James Niven, the Scottish physician known for reducing the death rate of influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic in Manchester.