Sir Christopher John MacRae Whitty (born 21 April 1966) is a British epidemiologist serving as Chief Medical Officer for England (CMO) and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government since 2019. He has also been Gresham Professor of Physic since 2018. Whitty served as Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) to the Department of Health and Social Care and Head of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) from 2016 to 2021. He was also the Acting Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018. Since March 2020, Whitty has played a key role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, alongside Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Whitty was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to public health. Early life Whitty was born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, on 21 April 1966, the first of four sons born to Kenneth and Susannah Whitty. His father was a British Council officer, who was posted to various countries including Nigeria, where the family lived in Kaduna, and Malawi. While Deputy Director of the British Council in Athens, Kenneth Whitty was murdered by militants from the Abu Nidal Organisation, in 1984, when Whitty was 17. His mother was a teacher. His maternal uncle Sir Christopher MacRae was also a diplomat, and his grandmother Grace Summerhayes was a pioneering obstetrician in Africa, who set up the first maternity hospital in Ghana in 1928. Whitty was sent back to the UK for his schooling, where he attended Windlesham House School in Pulborough, West Sussex, and Malvern College, Worcestershire. He then studied at Pembroke College, Oxford (BA in Physiology, DSc in medical science), Wolfson College, Oxford (BM BCh in Medicine, 1991, where he was also the founding chair of the National Postgraduate Committee), the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (DTM&H in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 1996; MSc in Epidemiology, 1996), Northumbria University (LLM in Medical Law, 2005), Heriot-Watt University (MBA in Business Administration, 2010), and the Open University (DipEcon in Economics). Career Whitty is a practising National Health Service (NHS) consultant physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and Gresham Professor of Physic at Gresham College, a post dating back to 1597. Until becoming CMO he was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine