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Professor John Marshall

Professor John Marshall

Professor John Marshall is the Frost Professor of Ophthalmology and Chairman of the Academic Department of Ophthalmology, at St Thomas' Hospital, and was formerly Sembal Professor of Experimental Ophthalmology at the Institute of Ophthalmology from 1982-1991.  His research over the past forty years has ranged over a number of ocular problems but has concentrated on the inter-relationships between light and ageing, the mechanisms underlying age-related, diabetic and inherited retinal disease, and the development of lasers for use in ophthalmic diagnosis and surgery.  This work has resulted in almost four hundred research papers and numerous book chapters and books.  It produced and patented the revolutionary Excimer laser for the correction of refractive disorders with in excess of 17 million procedures now having been undertaken worldwide.   It also created the world’s first Diode laser for treating eye problems of diabetes, glaucoma and ageing.  He is editor and co-editor of numerous international journals.  He has been awarded the Nettleship Medal of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, the Mackenzie Medal, the Raynor Medal, the Ridley Medal, the Ashton Medal, the Ida Mann Medal and the Lord Crook Gold Medal of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers, the Doyne Medal of the Oxford Congress, the Barraquer Medal of the International Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the Kelman Innovator Award of the American Society for Refractive and Cataract surgery, and the Lim Medal of the Singapore National Eye Centre.  He has been visiting professor at numerous universities on every continent. 

He has held posts chairing the medical advisory boards of many international companies and was a director of Diomed for some years, this being the leading supplier of diode laser systems for surgery.  He sits and chairs many national and international committees* concerned with protecting the public against the possible damaging effects of lasers and other artificial light sources and played an active role with the ICRC in addressing the United Nations to obtain a Geneva Convention banning the use of anti-personnel laser weapons.  He is currently the Chairman of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board and Trustee of the British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society, and until 1995 he was Co-Chairman of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of the International Retinitis Pigmentosa Association.  He is the scientific adviser to the National Eye Research Centre.  He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, an Honorary Fellow of The College of Optometrists, a Fellow and Director of the Laser Institute of America, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University.  He has a Senior Achievement Award of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and several national ophthalmological societies, as well as being elected to the Academia Ophthalmologica Europeae.

• World Health Organisation (WHO)
• Non-ionizing Radiation Committee of the International Radiological Protection Association
• International Electro-Technical Commission (IEC)
• British Standards Institution (BSI)
• European Community (EC)
• International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
• National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB)