Peter Hamill, 80, Tobacco Researcher
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Dr. Peter VanVechten Hamill, medical coordinator for the surgeon general’s report that spurred Congress to require warning labels on cigarette packs, died March 10 in Annapolis, Md. He was 80.
Hamill was scientific director and medical coordinator under U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Luther L. Terry, who issued the groundbreaking study in 1964 that said smoking was a major cause of lung cancer and other diseases.
Hamill also chaired a government study on human growth that reported in 1976 that a trend of the stature of Americans increasingly steadily decade by decade through most of the last century had virtually ceased during the 1950s. The research was used to design the growth and development charts used by doctors and nutritionists.
Hamill was an avid sportsman and accomplished sailor who was a Golden Gloves boxing champion in 1944, his family said.
