page_title: Macfarlane Burnet
section_title: Virology and medicine
hierarchical_section_title: Macfarlane Burnet / Walter and Eliza Hall Institute / Virology and medicine
caption_attribution_description: English: Peter Colman, Officer of the CSIRO at the Division of Protein Chemistry, showing his flu protein (neuraminidase) model to Frank Macfarlane Burnet.
context_page_description: Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, OM, AK, KBE, FRS, FAA, FRSNZ, usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist best known for his contributions to immunology. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune tolerance and was best known for developing 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, and served as its president from 1965 to 1969.
context_section_description: When Burnet returned to Australia, he went back to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, where he was appointed assistant director by Kellaway. His first assignment was to investigate the "Bundaberg disaster", in which 12 children had died after receiving a contaminated diphtheria vaccine. Kellaway was put in charge of a royal commission to investigate the matter and he put Burnet in charge of the laboratory investigations. He identified Staphylococcus aureus in the toxin-antitoxin mixture that had been administered to the children; it had been picked up from the skin of one of the children and then transmitted to the others in the injections. However, it turned out to be another toxin that had caused the children's deaths; this work on staphylococcal toxin piqued his interest in immunology. During this time, he continued to study bacteriophages, writing 32 papers on phages between 1924 and 1937. In 1929, Burnet and his graduate assistant Margot McKie wrote a paper suggesting that bacteriophages could exist as a stable non-infectious form that multiplies with the bacterial host. Their pioneering description of lysogeny was not accepted until much later, and was crucial to the work of Max Delbrück, Alfred Hershey and Salvador Luria on the replication mechanism and genetics of viruses, for which they were awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
  Between 1932 and 1933, Burnet took leave of absence to undertake a fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. The Great Depression had resulted in Burnet's salary being cut from 1000 to 750 pounds, and the National Institute had been given a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that allowed them to hire Burnet at 1000 pounds per annum. The National Institute's Director Sir Henry Dale gained permission from Kellaway for the two-year move; Kellaway promised to hold Burnet's job for him when he returned and felt that the experience would make Burnet—whom he saw as the Hall Institute's brightest young scientist—better equipped to expand operations when he returned to Melbourne. Dale also paid for Burnet's sister to travel to England to help look after her brother's young children.
  Significant breakthroughs in virology were made while he was there, including the isolation and first demonstration of the transmission of the influenza virus. His own research was on the canarypox virus, which he used in developing a chick embryo assay for the isolation and quantification of animal viruses. Dale offered Burnet a permanent position but he declined and returned to the Hall Institute. Following his productive work in London, the Rockefeller Institute agreed to fund a new virus research laboratory in Melbourne for Burnet. He brought back a set of viruses from the National Institute to begin the basis of research in Melbourne.
  When Burnet returned to Australia, he continued his work on virology, including the epidemiology of herpes simplex. He was also involved in two projects that were not viral, the characterisation of the causative agents of psittacosis and Q fever. After finding that parrots and cockatoos were infected with psittacosis and were responsible for transmission, he lobbied the government for a ban in order to prevent human infection, but he was rebuffed and later came to agree with the government position that there was not much danger. During the time he worked on Q fever with Australian scientist E.H. Derrick, the causative organism of which was named Coxiella burnetii in Burnet's honour, he became the first person to acquire the disease in the laboratory. His epidemiological studies of herpes and Q fever displayed an appreciation of the ecology of infectious disease that became a characteristic of his scientific method.
  During World War II, Burnet's research moved to influenza and scrub typhus. With the outbreak of war, Burnet was handed more responsibility and made acting director and had to oversee the move into a new building as Kellaway was seconded to the military in 1939. Due to Kellaway, many of the infectious disease proble
caption: Peter Colman, Officer of the CSIRO at the Division of Protein Chemistry, showing his flu protein (neuraminidase) model to Frank Macfarlane Burnet.
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