Professor Sir Michael Rutter
Since 1998 Sir Michael has been Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. Sir Michael graduated from the University of Birmingham (UK) medical school in 1955. He undertook postgraduate training in medicine, paediatrics and neurology, before obtaining psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital, London. After winning a Nuffield Travelling Fellowship to study child development at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) he joined the MRC Child Psychiatry Unit on his return. He was appointed senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London in 1966, then reader and then Professor of Child Psychiatry in 1973. He established the MRC Child Psychiatry Research Unit in 1984 and the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre in 1994 being honorary director of both until October 1998.
Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and an honorary Fellow of the British Academy. He is Founder Fellow of the Academia Europaea and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was Deputy Chairman of the Wellcome Trust 1999-2004, and is currently a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. He has received numerous international honours and has published some 40 books and over 400 scientific papers and chapters including the Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, first published in 1974 and now in its 5th edition.
He has been involved in research into autism for more than 40 years, with a particular interest in epidemiology, longitudinal studies, clinical investigation, genetics and the evaluation of educational and clinical services; he also developed the diagnostic and screening measures for autism;. He was made CBE in 1985 and Knight Baronet in 1992.
