Martin Raw obituary

Martin Raw was involved in creating National No Smoking Day in the UK, which launched on Ash Wednesday 1984. Two years earlier he co-authored the first clinical trial showing that nicotine gum helped people to quit. Photograph: family

The sharp drop in the number of smokers in the UK over the past 40 years, and England’s leading role in the global smoking cessation movement, owe much to the research work of Martin Raw, who has died of pulmonary fibrosis aged 73.

Millions of smokers will have been prompted and supported to quit thanks to Raw’s findings and advocacy. He was lead author of England’s first evidence-based guidelines on how to treat tobacco dependence, in 1998, which led to the creation of a national network of NHS smoking cessation services that continue today and that have been emulated by many countries across the world.