Professor Tim Cole stands as a preeminent figure in medical statistics with over five decades of transformative contributions to pediatric growth assessment. He currently holds emeritus status at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, having served as Professor of Medical Statistics from 1999 until his retirement in 2024. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, his distinguished career began with the British Medical Research Council in 1970, where he held successive positions at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit in South Wales, the Dunn Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, and ultimately University College London. This extensive institutional foundation enabled his pioneering work in growth chart methodology that would revolutionize pediatric practice worldwide.
Professor Cole's most significant contribution is the development of the LMS statistical method, which forms the mathematical foundation for national and international growth references adopted by the UK, USA, WHO, and numerous other countries. He also created the International Obesity TaskForce (IOTF) child obesity BMI cut-offs, published in 2000, which established the global standard for classifying childhood overweight and obesity across diverse populations. His research spans anthropometry, growth curve analysis through the SITAR method, and body size scaling, with applications extending to forensic age assessment and child health monitoring. With over 600 peer-reviewed publications accumulating more than 110,000 citations and an impressive h-index of 152, his scholarly impact has fundamentally reshaped how clinicians and researchers assess child growth and development.
His exceptional contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious accolades including a CBE for services to medical statistics, the Rank Prize for Nutrition, the Royal Statistical Society's Bradford Hill Medal, and the Tanner Memorial Medal of the Society for the Study of Human Biology. For more than thirty years, Professor Cole served as Statistical Editor for the British Medical Journal, profoundly influencing scientific rigor in medical research publishing. His IOTF BMI cut-offs remain the international standard used in global health monitoring, including the Institute for Health Metrics' Global Burden of Disease estimates. Even in his emeritus role, he continues to advance the field, having recently developed algorithms for converting between WHO and IOTF growth criteria, ensuring continuity in longitudinal studies and global health assessments.
