Person

Kerr, John Foxton Ross (1934 - )

AO FAA FRACP FRCP FRCPA FRCPath

Born
24 January 1934
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Lepidopterist and Pathologist

Summary

John Foxton R. Kerr has been dubbed the father of apoptosis. He was Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland and Adjunct Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. His research concentrated on the area of cell death by apoptosis and he was the first to delineate the ultrastructural features of apoptosis, showing it to be quite distinct from necrosis, provoked by tissue injury. He drew attention for the first time to the role of cell death in normal adult mammals and in disease. His landmark paper in 1972 with Wyllie and Currie named this process apoptosis, to emphasise its complementary but opposite role to mitosis. In 2000 he was awarded (joint recipient) Germany's most distinguished award in biomedical research - the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize - for his life-long contributions to apoptosis. Kerr was an enthisiastic lepidopterist, donating to the Australian National Insect Collection his butterfly and moth collections in 2013 and 2015.

Details

Chronology

1955
Education - Bachelor of Science (BSc) completed at the University of Queensland
1957
Education - Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and Bachelor of Surgery (BS) completed at the University of Queensland
1958 - 1959
Career position - Intern at the Royal Brisbane Hospital
1960 - 1961
Career position - Pathology Registrar at the Royal Brisbane Hospital
1962 - ?
Career position - Member of the Royal College of Physicians of London
1964
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) completed at the University of London (University College Hospital Medical School)
1965 - ?
Career position - Member of the Royal College of Pathologists (UK)
1965 - 1972
Career position - Senior Lecturer in Pathology at the University of Queensland
1967 -
Award - Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia (FRCPA)
1973 - 1974
Career position - Reader in Pathology at the University of Queensland
1974 -
Award - Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP)
1974 - 1995
Career position - Professor of Pathology at the University of Queensland and Pathologist at the Royal Brisbane Hospital
1977 -
Award - Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (UK)
1988 - 1995
Career position - Adjunct Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research
1989
Award - Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Distinguished Fellows' Award received
1992
Award - Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians( FRCP), London
1992
Award - Bancroft Medal received from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research
1993
Award - Bancroft Medal received from the Australian Medical Association
1995
Life event - Retired
1995
Award - Fred W Stewart Award received from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre
1996 -
Career position - Professor Emeritus at the University of Queensland
1996
Award - Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to medicine, particularly for his research into pathology, cell death and apoptosis and as professor of pathology at the University of Queensland for 20 years
1998 -
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of Science
2000
Award - Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize received
2002
Award - International Charles IV Prize received from the City of Prague and Charles University

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Journal Articles

  • Edwards, Ted, 'Professor J.F.R Kerr's butterfly collection donated to ANIC', ANICdotes, 3 (2013), 4. Details
  • Edwards, Ted and Turco, Federica, 'News from the Lepidoptera collection [donations from Fred and Nel Gerrits, and John Kerr]', ANICdotes, 8 (2016), 5. Details
  • O'Rourke, M.G.; and Ellem, K.A., 'John Kerr and Apoptosis', Medical Journal of Australia, 173 (11-12) (2000), 616-617. http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/173_11_041200/orourke/orourke.html. Details
  • Sternberg, Stephen, 'John Foxton Ross Kerr, M.B., Ph.D., recipient of the 1995 Fred W. Stewart Award', American journal of surgical pathology, 20 (3) (1996), 380-1. Details

Resources

Annette Alafaci

EOAS ID: biogs/P004676b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004676b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260