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George Godber was chief medical officer from 1950 to 1973. He was, said Sir Douglas Black (obituary BMJ 2002;325:661), "a medical lay saint, three terms that are normally incompatible"; Stephen Lock, a former BMJ editor, said, "He managed to be a saint without being a bore."
Sir George was brought up in Bedford, the son of a market gardener. From Bedford School he went to New College Oxford, where he was a rowing Blue. His tutor was the historian H A L Fisher, who also tutored Dick Crossman, who as an MP became Sir George's Secretary of State for Health. Sir George qualified in 1933 from the London Hospital, where he encountered patients with serious diseases who were too poor to pay for treatment and too proud to ask for charity. He earned the diploma in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1936. He spent two years in public health in Surrey before joining the then Department of Health. He was in charge of the North Midland region, which had no full time paediatrician or pathologist, when the Beveridge report was published. A former chief medical officer, Sir Wilson Jameson, picked him to be his successor but one. He organised wartime medical services, including maternity services for people evacuated from cities.
Sir George became deputy chief medical officer in 1950, two years after the birth of the NHS, when he organised country-wide consultant cover and brought in free contraception. He became chief medical officer 10 years later. The...