Professor Matthew Smallman-Raynor

Matthew Smallman-Raynor is Professor of Geography at the University of Nottingham.

He studied as both an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Cambridge where he completed his PhD on the international geography of HIV/AIDS in 1991. Following academic positions at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter, and a visiting fellowship at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, he joined the School of Geography at Nottingham in March 1996.

He has worked on the historical and contemporary geography of communicable diseases for some 35 years. With Andrew Cliff and Peter Haggett, he has co-authored numerous books, monographs and atlases, including: Measles: An Historical Geography (Blackwell, 1993); Deciphering Global Epidemics (CUP, 1998); Island Epidemics (OUP, 2000); War Epidemics (OUP, 2004); World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases (Arnold, 2004); Poliomyelitis: An Historical Geography (OUP, 2006); Infectious Disease Emergence and Re-Emergence (OUP, 2009); Atlas of Epidemic Britain (OUP, 2012); Infectious Disease Control (OUP, 2013); Atlas of Refugees, Displaced Populations and Epidemic Diseases (OUP. 2018); and A Geography of Infection (OUP, 2022). The Atlas of Epidemic Britain was named Medical Book of the Year by the British Medical Association (BMA). He is currently working with colleagues at Nottingham and Cambridge on a companion volume, Atlas of Vaccination in Britain (CUP, forthcoming).

Caption for map shown above

Common vehicle epidemic of enteric fever in the cotton town of Colne, Lancashire, December 1912–January 1913. Map showing the distribution of houses invaded by enteric fever (cross symbols) in relation to the round of the implicated milk dealer, C (red line). Dealer C was one of 68 milk distributors who operated in the town. Twice daily, C obtained milk from farms A and B at the meeting point indicated. By 19 February, 1913, 74 notifications of the disease in 54 houses had been received, distributed indiscriminately by age and sex. There were six deaths. The index case was a female at farm A, who consumed uncooked mussels from Morecambe Bay, in certain parts of which shellfish were known to be liable to pollution. Source: Hutchinson (1913, opposite p. 4).