Simon Chapman AO PhD is Emeritus Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney. Across 45 years, he has been a prominent researcher and advocate for tobacco control, gun control, wind farms and renewable energy. He was foundation deputy editor (1992–97), editor (1998–2008) and emeritus editor (since 2009) for the British Medical Journal’s specialist journal Tobacco Control. In 1997 he was awarded the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day Medal and in 2003 the American Cancer Society’s Luther Terry Award for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control. In 2008 he was awarded the NSW Premier’s Cancer Researcher of the Year medal and in 2013 he was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for his contributions to public health, and named Australian Skeptic of the Year. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and an honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom.
He is a life member of the Australian Consumers Association, having been a board member for 20 years and chair for four. The Sydney Morning Herald named him in 2008 and 2012 as one of Sydney’s 100 most influential people. In 2014, he was deeply honoured when Australia’s leading right-wing think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, named him as one of 12 all-time “opponents of freedom”.
His column for The Conversation (2015–18) has been read 3.63 million times. He blogs at simonchapman6.com and tweets @simonchapman6.
Simon Chapman and Fiona Crichton (2017). Wind turbine syndrome: a communicated disease. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Simon Chapman (2016). Smoke signals: selective writing. Sydney: Darlington Press.
Simon Chapman and Becky Freeman (2014). Removing the emperor’s clothes: Australia and tobacco plain packaging. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Simon Chapman (2013). Over our dead bodies: Port Arthur and gun control. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Simon Chapman, Alex Barratt and Martin Stockler (2010). Let sleeping dogs lie? What men should know before being tested for prostate cancer. Sydney: Sydney University Press.