Macfarlane Burnet

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (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. He also developed the theory of clonal selection. Burnet received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Melbourne in 1924, and his PhD from the University of London in 1928. He went on to conduct pioneering research in microbiology and immunology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, and served as director of the Institute from 1944 to 1965. From 1965 until his retirement in 1978, Burnet worked at the University of Melbourne. Throughout his career he played an active role in the development of public policy for the medical sciences in Australia and was a founding member of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), and served as its president from 1965 to 1969. Burnet's major achievements in microbiology included discovering the causative agents of Q-fever and psittacosis; developing assays for the isolation, culture and detection of influenza virus; describing the recombination of influenza strains; demonstrating that the myxomatosis virus does not cause disease in humans. Modern methods for producing influenza vaccines are still based on Burnet's work improving virus growing processes in hen's eggs. For his contributions to Australian science, Burnet was made the first Australian of the Year in 1960, and in 1978 a Knight of the Order of Australia. He was recognised internationally for his achievements: in addition to the Nobel, he received the Lasker Award and the Royal and Copley Medal from the Royal Society, honorary doctorates, and distinguished service honours from the Commonwealth of Nations and Japan.

Early life Burnet was born in Traralgon, Victoria; his father, Frank Burnet, a Scottish emigrant to Australia, was the manager of the Traralgon branch of the Colonial Bank. His mother Hadassah Burnet (née Mackay) was the daughter of a middle-class Scottish immigrant, and met his father when Frank was working in the town of Koroit. Frank was 36, and 14 years older than Hadassah. The family was socially conservative Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Frank Macfarlane Burnet was the second of seven children and from childhood was known as "Mac". He had an older sister, two younger sisters and three younger brothers. The eldest daughter Doris had a mental disability that consumed most of Hadassah's time and the family saw Doris's condition as an unspoken stigma, discouraging the other children from inviting friends home, lest they come across the eldest daughter. From his early years in Traralgon, Mac enjoyed exploring the environment around him, particularly Traralgon Creek. He first attended a private school run by a single teacher before starting at the government primary school at the age of 7. Mac was distant from his father—who liked to spend his free time fishing and playing golf—from a young age. He preferred bookish pursuits from a young age and was not enamoured of sport, and by the age of eight was old enough to analyse his father's character; Mac disapproved of Frank and saw him as a hypocrite who espoused moral principles and put on a facade of uprightedness, while associating with businessmen of dubious ethics. Hadassah was preoccupied with Doris, so Mac developed a rather solitary personality. The Burnets moved to Terang in 1909, when Frank was posted to be the bank manager there, having declined a post in London. Burnet was interested in the wildlife around the nearby Lake Terang; he joined the Scouts in 1910 and enjoyed all outdoor activities. While living in Terang, he began to collect beetles and study biology. He became acquainted with Charles Darwin's work by reading biology articles in the Chambers Encyclopaedia. During his early teens, the family took annual holidays to Port Fairy, where Burnet spent his time observing and recording the behaviour of the wildlife. He was educated at Terang State School and attended Sunday school at the local church, where the priest encouraged him to pursue scholastic studies and awarded him a book on ants as a reward for his academic performance. He advised Frank to invest in Mac's education and he won a full scholarship to board and study at Geelong College, one of Victoria's most exclusive private schools. Starting there in 1913, Burnet was the only boarder with a full scholarship. He did not enjoy his time there among the scions of the ruling upper class; while most of his peers were brash and sports-oriented, Burnet was bookish and not athletically inclined, and found his fellow students to be arrogant and boorish. During this period he kept his beetle-collecting and disapproval of his peers a secret and mixed with his schoolmates out of necessity. Nevertheless, his academic prowess gained him privileges, and he graduated in 1916, placing first in his school overall, and in history, English, chemistry and physics. The typical university path for a person of his social background was to pursue studies in theology, law or medicine. By this time, he was becoming disillusioned with religion and chose medicine. Due to World War I, military service was a possibility and he felt that a medical background would increase his chances of being given a non-combat post.

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