Simon Chapman AO PhD FASSA Hon FFPH (UK)
I am an Emeritus Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney, from which I retired in February 2016. I live in Sydney on Gadigal land.
My full CV with links to most publications (last updated 9 January 2025)
My Conversation column and articles (n=113): 3.815 million reads
WordPress blogs: 186 blogs since 11 Aug, 2018. 163,865 views (av 61/day) from 114,575 unique viewers (av 43/day).
Twitter impressions: 2015-Jan 2024: 36.846 million (when these data were stopped for non-X subscribers).
#1 most accessed+downloaded author in University of Sydney’s e-scholarship repository (427,494 accesses).
Ranked 510 in the world’s top 2000 and 34 in Australia’s top 435 for 2024 for Social Sciences & Humanities by Research.com
Ranked 18,600 for citations among 10,993,183 authors with 5 or more publications (in any field) from Scopus data up to Aug 2025: top 0.17% (see Table 1 here) and 158 among 65,495 public health authors (top 0.2%) (see Table 1 column AS here) Composite C-score: 4.0336
Career highlights
• Co-convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control (1994-1996) which won the 1996 Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Community Human Rights award.
• Deputy editor (1992-97), Editor (1998-2008), Emeritus Editor since 2009, BMJ’s Tobacco Control
• World Health Organization World No Tobacco Day Medal for tobacco control, 1997
• National Heart Foundation (Australia), President’s Gold Medal, 1999
• Life member, Australian Consumers’ Association, publishers of Choice (conferred 2003) for 20 years of board membership, including four as chair.
• American Cancer Society’s Luther Terry Medal for Outstanding Individual Leadership. 13th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, Helsinki, August 2003
• Research selected as one of Australia’s “10 best” by National Health & Medical Research Council, 2005 and 2010 (as part of team led by Prof Melanie Wakefield)
• President’s Award Thoracic Society of Australia, 2006
• One of 8 past and present public health academics profiled in the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Medicine’s 150th Anniversary book 150 Years, 150 Firsts. The people of the Faculty of Medicine, 2006.
• NSW Premier’s Award (medal and $50,000 acceptance speech): Outstanding Cancer Researcher of the Year, 22 May 2008
• Elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia (FASSA) 2008
• NSW Finalist Australian of the Year 2009
• Sidney Sax Medal 2008: Public Health Association of Australia
• Listed in health and medicine category as among the 10 “smartest, most creative and innovative people in Australia”. Smart 100. The Bulletin 2003; Oct 28:96; One of the “top 100 of Sydney’s most influential people.” Sydney Morning Herald Sydney Magazine, Jan 2009 and Nov 2012.
• Distinguished Professorial Achievement Award, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney $10,000. November 2012
• Elected Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Public Health of Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom March 2013
• Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) Jun 10, 2013 “for distinguished service to medical research as an academic and author, particularly in the area of public health policy, and to the community.”
• Australian Skeptic of the Year (awarded by Australian Skeptics Inc, Nov 23, 2013)
• Institute of Public Affairs (Australia) IPA Review Jan 2014. Proudly, one of their “Dirty dozen” all-time Australian “opponents of freedom”
• Rockefeller Foundation. Writer in residence, Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy April 1-29, 2014 (see memoir “entering paradise” at p 94 here)
• Public Health Impact Award, NSW Public Health Association 2016
Inner West Council (Sydney) Senior Citizen of the Year 2020
Latest bookQuit smoking weapons of mass distraction. Sydney University Press (2022) FREE OPEN ACCESS e-book (9,004 accesses since Jul 25, 2022) $40 paperback
Simon Chapman AO 