Keith Peters (physician)


Sir David Keith Peters is a retired Welsh physician and academic. He was Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge from 1987 to 2005, where he was also head of the School of Clinical Medicine.

Education

Educated at Glan Afan Grammar School Port Talbot, Peters graduated in Medicine from the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1961.

Career and research

Peters' research interests focused on the role of the immune system in kidney and vascular diseases. His key achievements included increasing understanding of how a kidney disease called glomerulonephritis develops.
After posts at the University of Birmingham, the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill and the Welsh National School of Medicine, he was appointed Lecturer in Medicine and Consultant Physician at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital in 1969

Awards and honours

Peters was knighted in the 1993 New Year's Honours List, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and was the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences from 2002 to 2006 He was a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.
Peters is an Honorary Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and has received Honorary Doctorates and Fellowships from the University of Wales College of Medicine and the following universities: Wales, Swansea, Aberdeen, Nottingham, Paris, Birmingham, Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Sussex, Bristol, Keele, Warwick, UCL, Kings College, Imperial College and Cardiff. At the Royal College of Physicians he delivered the Goulstonian Lecture in 1976, the Bradshaw Lecture in 1985, and the Harveian Oration in 2004. On 15 June 2016 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medical Science by the University of Cambridge. He is a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society and a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Medicine.In 2018 he was made an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. In 2019 the research building housing the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research and the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit was renamed the Keith Peters Building.The Board Room at the Francis Crick Institute and a ward in the Renal Unit at Hammersmith Hospital are also named after him.
Peters was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to the advancement of medical science.