Dr Donald Maxwell (Max) Parkin was born in 1944, and graduated summa cum laude in medicine at Edinburgh University in 1968, where he later took an MD (1985). After an early career in clinical medicine, he moved to Public Health, working in Edinburgh, Leeds, the USA (University of Michigan) before moving to Lyon, France, join the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 1981, where he became head of the department of Descriptive Epidemiology. He remained in Lyon for 23 years, publishing extensively on cancer epidemiology, notably on geographic patterns and trends, as well as on evaluation of cancer screening.

In 2004 he returned to UK, and joined CTSU as Honorary Senior Research Fellow, and in 2005 the Wolfson Institute, Queen Mary University of London. He continues his association with the IARC as Senior Visiting Scientist, in order to coordinate the activities of cancer registries in Africa. The latter work is through the African Network of Cancer Registries, which was founded in 2011 with a grant from the Doris Duke cancer Foundation, USA. This project is managed through the Oxford-based NGO “INCTR Challenge Fund”.