Oliver J. Gillie (31 October 1937 – 15 May 2021)^[1] was a British journalist and scientist. He previously served as the medical correspondent forThe Sunday Times, and later medical editor forThe Independent.

In 2014, he was awarded theMedical Journalists' Association Lifetime Achievement Award for his work.^[2]

He held aBSc andPhD ingenetics, both fromEdinburgh University, where he studied at the Institute of Animal Genetics underConrad H. Waddington.^[3] HisPhD thesis was"Growth and genetic control of enzyme level in Neurospora".^[4] After his PhD he won a Fulbright scholarship toStanford inCalifornia.

Among his most notable journalistic work was being the first to publicly accuseCyril Burt ofscientific fraud. In 1976, Gillie published an article claiming that Burt had fabricated much of the data he had included in his publications, as well as two women whom Burt claimed had been his research assistants, but whom Gillie concluded had never existed. He reached this conclusion after investigating to find evidence that either woman (Margaret Howard and Jane Conway) had ever existed, talking to people who had known Burt for many years. He had also talked tohuman intelligence researchers who told him that Burt's data was suspect.^[5][6] He has also researched the adverse health effects ofvitamin D deficiency, specifically, that caused by insufficient exposure tosunlight.^[7][8][9]

Gillie was born in North Shields,Northumberland and was the second of three brothers. His father, John Gillie, was a nautical instrument maker and his mother, Ann (née Philipson), studied fine art in Newcastle and Paris. He went to local schools and then graduated with a first-class degree in natural sciences atEdinburgh. He had astrawberry birthmark on his left cheek and neck, which he believed cost him a place at Cambridge University. The don who interviewed him had a much more obvious birthmark, and Gillie believed the ensuing embarrassment had a negative effect on the interview.^[10]

He was from a Quaker background, and was brought up as a pacifist. He believed people should live well and respect their bodies, always opting for a healthy lifestyle.^[10]

He had three marriages. In 1964, he married Walpurga Hesper, who was Dutch. They were married in Rotterdam. After the premature birth and death of a daughter called Frances, born in Edinburgh, the couple divorced in 1968. In 1969, he married his second wife Louise Panton, a documentary film-maker, and they had two daughters, Lucy and Juliet, but divorced in 1991. In 1999, he married Jan Thompson, a journalist and managing editor ofThe Guardian, and they had two sons, Calder and Sholto.

On 15 May 2021, Gillie died at the age of 83.^[11] He had been suffering from lymphocytic leukaemia.^[10]

• 1937 births
• 2021 deaths
• Medical journalists
• British science journalists
• 20th-century British journalists
• Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
• British geneticists
• The Sunday Times people
• The Independent people
• People from North Shields
• Writers from Tyne and Wear

• CS1 errors: missing periodical
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from May 2021
• Articles with hCards