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Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet OM AK KBE FRS FAA FRSNZ (3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985), usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist known for his contributions to immunology. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune tolerance and he developed the theory of clonal selection.
Sir Macfarlane Burnet was an Australian physician, immunologist, and virologist who, with Sir Peter Medawar, was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance, the concept on which tissue transplantation is founded.
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Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1960. Born: 3 September 1899, Traralgon, Australia. Died: 31 August 1985, Melbourne, Australia. Affiliation at the time of the award: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia.
- Introduction
- Early Life
- University Education
- Scientific Career
- Pattern of Work
- Scientific Work
- Academy Activities
- Public Policy
- Honours and Awards
With the death of Frank Macfarlane Burnet on 31 August 1985, Australia lost its greatest biologist, a man who had spent virtually all of a long working life in Australia. His experimental work on bacteriophages and animal viruses, especially influenza virus, resulted in major discoveries concerning their nature and replication, and he was a pioneer...
Burnet was born in Traralgon, in eastern Victoria, on 3 September 1899. His father, Frank Burnet, was born in 1856 in Langholm, Scotland, and emigrated to Australia as a young man; his paternal grandfather was an architect and factor to the Duke of Buccleuch in Dumfriesshire. His mother, née Hadassah Pollock Mackay, was born in Koroit, in Victoria,...
Having completed his primary school education in Terang, Burnet was sent to Geelong College for four years – an experience that he did not greatly enjoy. In his final year he gained scholarships enabling him to proceed to the university, the most important being a residential scholarship at Ormond College, in the University of Melbourne. Choice of ...
The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, 1924
At that time the pathology laboratories of the Melbourne Hospital were operated as part (then the larger part) of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, which had been established in 1915. As a medical resident, Burnet had been interested in the attempts of Dr N.H. Fairley (later Sir Neil Hamilton Fairley), then a member of the Institute staff, to treat cases of typhoid fever by intravenous injections of typhoid vaccine – an interest that led to Burnet's first scientific papers and subsequently...
The Lister Institute, London, 1925-1927
Kellaway saw Burnet as the potential leader of the small bacteriology section, but decided that he should first have overseas training, and Burnet left for England as a ship's surgeon in June 1925. He took a position at the Lister Institute because there was a paid position available there as an assistant to the curator of the National Collection of Type Cultures, which allowed him about two-thirds of his time for research. A few months later he obtained a Beit Fellowship Award and was able t...
Bacteriologist at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 1928-1931
Shortly after his return to Australia in 1928, an event called the 'Bundaberg disaster' occurred, in which several children died after receiving inoculations of diphtheria toxin-antitoxin. Kellaway headed the Royal Commission appointed to investigate the tragedy (3) and Burnet carried out the bacteriological investigations, leading to important studies on staphylococcal toxins. At the same time he continued studies on bacteriophages, producing some papers later regarded as classics.
Daily and weekly routine
Before embarking upon an analysis of Burnet's scientific work it may be useful to outline the pattern of his activities during the period 1945-55. After this, his increasing fame led to many other calls on his time and increased absences overseas, which disrupted this pattern somewhat, but when at the Institute Burnet always devoted a substantial part of each day to work in the laboratory. Throughout his life at the bench, he worked alone, except for one or sometimes two graduate assistants a...
Intellectual processes
This account of his daily work shows that Burnet was a dedicated and hard-working scientist. Hundreds of other scientists share these traits – what made Burnet so outstanding? Nossal (7) and Cohn (8) have analysed this question, and some of the answers will emerge from the description of Burnet's scientific work which follows. But it may be useful to attempt a summary here. Although perhaps better known as a theoretical biologist, Burnet was a first-class experimental scientist, who until wel...
Burnet's first scientific paper was published in 1924 and his last in 1983; his first monograph appeared in 1936 and his thirty-first and last book in 1979. For over two-thirds of the long period during which he was writing, he spent well over half of each working day, on average, at the bench. His work covered a wider range of subjects in biomedic...
As a Fellow of The Royal Society resident in Australia, Burnet was a Petitioner for the Charter and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Since he was acknowledged to be the leading biological scientist in Australia, it was natural that in 1958 he should be asked to succeed Sir Mark Oliphant who as the moving spirit in the forma...
Burnet was an innately shy person, and until 1937 he had never served on a committee that dealt with matters of public policy. In that year he was deputed to act as spokesman for the Advisory Council set up by the Victorian Government to advise it on measures to be taken in the face of a large outbreak of poliomyelitis. In the existing state of ign...
Burnet was by far the most highly decorated and honoured scientist to have worked in Australia – in this respect he and Florey stand out in a separate category from all other Australian-born scientists. Various categories of these honours and the years in which they were received are listed below.
Building upon Jerne's theory, Burnet proposed the clonal selection theory of antibody production in a 1957 article that he later expanded into a book. In Burnet's clonal selection theory, each lymphocyte is unique in that it has receptors specific for one particular antigen.
Significantly, Burnet's theory set the scene for modern cellular immunology research, and his paper should be considered a seminal landmark in the history of immunology.
May 18, 2018 · Burnet was a leading virologist and immunologist of the twentieth century. He contributed to the understanding of the complexity of host-parasite interactions through his studies of various microbial infections, including the bacteriophage phenomenon, Q fever, poliomyelitis, influenza, psittacosis, and herpes.
