Peter Herbert Beighton, a medical geneticist, was born in Lancashire in England in 1934 [1] and qualified in medicine in 1957 at the University of London's St Mary's Hospital. After several internships, Beighton served as a Medical Officer in the Parachute Regiment and with the United Nations forces during the Congo Crisis. In 1962 Beighton began training in internal medicine at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Beighton had a Fulbright research fellowship in clinical genetics in 1968-69 with Dr. Victor McKusick at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
In 1968 Beighton published a report in the British Heart Journal outlining that air travel can produce "an ideal climate for precipitating deep vein thrombosis". The airlines refused to warn passengers and it was only in the early 1990s that the link between long flights and deep vein thrombosis was made public.
Beighton did clinical research in the Sahara Desert and epidemiologic studies on Easter Island and in Southern Africa. In 1972, Beighton was appointed Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Medicine. His research was largely on inherited disorders of the skeleton and connective tissues.
Beighton has received many awards including the gold medal of the British Orthopaedic Association, the President's Medallion of the South African Orthopaedic Association, the Smith & Nephew literary award and the silver medal of the South African Medical Research Council. In 2002, he received the Order of Mapungubwe - Bronze, for outstanding work and lifetime achievement as a scientist, and research into the inherited disorder of the skeleton.[2]
He has been accorded Fellowship of the University of Cape Town and the British Society of Rheumatology, and in 1999, he obtained the degree of Master of Philosophy in History by thesis at the University of Lancaster, UK. Professor Beighton retired with Emeritus status at the end of 1999, retaining his links with UCT, and collaborating with the University of the Western Cape Faculty of Dentistry.
Fourteen of Professor Beighton's postgraduate students have been awarded Doctorates, and eight of these have achieved Professorial or Associate Professorial status. Professor Beighton is the author, co-author or editor of 19 monographs and editions, 25 chapters and more than 400 medical publications.
Peter Beighton and his wife Greta Beighton have a shared interest in the history of medical genetics and have published two unique volumes of brief biographies of people for whom genetic syndromes have been named.
Peter and Greta participate in the sport of orienteering, and they have been South African champions in their respective age groups on several occasions.