Richard G. Wilkinson

In August 2015, Wilkinson endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

He is best known for his book with Kate Pickett The Spirit Level, first published in 2009, which argues that societies with more equal distribution of incomes have better health, fewer social problems such as violence, drug abuse, teenage births, mental illness, obesity, and others, and are more cohesive than ones in which the gap between the rich and poor is greater.

Wilkinson retired from his post as a professor of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in 2008. He was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor. He is also Honorary Professor at University College London. In 2009 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett founded the Equality Trust, which seeks to explain the benefits of a more equal society and campaigns for greater income equality.

Richard Wilkinson was educated at Leighton Park School and Reading Technical College. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics. He then earned a Masters at the University of Pennsylvania. His University of Nottingham Masters of Medical Science thesis was "Socio-economic Factors in Mortality Differentials" (1976).

On 16 December 1976, his article entitled 'Dear David Ennals' was published in New Society; at that time, David Ennals was Secretary of State for Social Services. The article led eventually to the 1980 publication of the Black Report on Inequalities in Health. He was also Senior Research Fellow at the Trafford Centre for Medical Research of the University of Sussex in 2001.

From 1976 onwards his career focused on research into social class differences in health, the social determinants of health, and on the health and social effects of income inequality. He has authored hundreds of research articles, chapters and books, several with his colleague and partner, Kate Pickett. He received the Solidar's Silver Rose Award in 2013, Community Access Unlimited's Humanitarian award in 2013, the Irish Cancer Society's Charles Cully Memorial medal in 2014, and was The Australian Society for Medical Research's medallist in 2017.

Wilkinson's first book, Poverty and Progress was published by Methuen in 1973. He was a research student on a Health Education Council fellowship at the Department of Community Health, University of Nottingham and spent a year on a large-scale computer analysis of the possible causes of different health outcomes and social strata.

Richard Gerald Wilkinson (born 1943) is a British social epidemiologist, author, advocate, and left-wing political activist. He is Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, having retired in 2008. He is also Honorary Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London and Visiting Professor at University of York. In 2009, Richard co-founded The Equality Trust. Richard was awarded a 2013 Silver Rose Award from Solidar for championing equality and the 2014 Charles Cully Memorial Medal by the Irish Cancer Society.