Professor Sir Nicholas John Wald, MB, BS, DSc (Lond), FRCP, FFPH, FRCOG, FMedSci, CBiol, FlBiol, FRS is Professor of Environmental and Preventive Medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, part of Queen Mary, University of London.
An epidemiologist and educator, his main research has been in antenatal screening of pregnant women for congenital malformations. In the 1970s he showed that fetal neural tube defects could be detected by measuring alpha-fetoprotein in the mother's blood. This was the first example of screening for fetal abnormalities.
With epidemiologist Ian Leck (D.Sc, FRCP), Wald wrote Antenatal and Neonatal Screening: the book won the Public Health Category of the 2001 BMA Medical Book Competition. He has received numerous awards, including, in 2000, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation Award for Scientific Research. Wald was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2004, and was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to preventive medicine.