Person

Burnet, Frank Macfarlane (1899 - 1985)

AK KBE Kt OM FAA FRS FRSNZ

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    Burnet, Frank Macfarlane (1899-1985) - portrait image, c. 1960, courtesy of CSIRO Publishing.
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Born
3 September 1899
Traralgon, Victoria, Australia
Died
31 August 1985
Occupation
Medical scientist, Nobel laureate and Biologist

Summary

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne 1944-1966. In 1960 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly with Peter Brian Medawar, for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance. His work influenced the later developments of DNA sequencing.

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Details

Chronology

1922
Education - Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and Bachelor of Surgery (BS), University of Melbourne
1924
Education - Doctor of Medicine (MD), University of Melbourne
1925 - 1927
Career position - Beit Memorial Fellowship, Lister Institute in London
1928
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of London
1928 - 1931
Career position - Bacteriologist, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI)
1932 - 1933
Career position - National Institute of Medical Research funded work in London
1934 - 1943
Career position - Assistant Director of WEHI
1935
Award - Stewart Prize, British Medical Association
1938
Award - Walter Burfitt Prize, Royal Society of New South Wales
1939
Award - Cilento Medal, Australian Institute of Anatomy
1942 - 1985
Award - Fellow, The Royal Society, London (FRS)
1944 - 1965
Career position - Director of WEHI
1947
Award - Royal Medal, The Royal Society, London
1949
Career position - President, Section I & N (Medical Science, National Health and Physiology), Australian and New Zealand Associaiton for the Advnacement of Science
1951
Award - Knight Bachelor (Kt) - for services to biological research
1953
Award - Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal
1953
Career event - Petitioner for the Australian Academy of Science
1953
Award - Charles Mickle Fellowship, University of Toronto, Canada
1953
Award - Lasker Award, American Public Health Association
1954
Award - James Cook Medal, Royal Society of New South Wales
1954
Award - Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences
1954
Award - Von Behring Prize for 1952, University of Marburg
1954 - 1985
Award - Founding Fellow, Australian Academy of Science (FAA)
1957
Award - Foreign member, Royal Swedish Academy of Science
1957
Award - President, Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS)
1958
Award - Order of Merit (OM) - winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960
1958
Award - Galen Medal, the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London
1959
Award - Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture, Australian Academy of Science
1959
Award - Copley Medal, The Royal Society, London
1959 - 1960
Career position - President, Australian Society for Microbiology
1960
Award - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (jointly with Peter Brian Medawar) - for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance
1960
Award - Honorary member, Royal Society of New Zealand
1961
Award - Second Order of the Rising Sun (with Double Rays)
1962
Award - Doctor of Laws (LLD), honoris causa, University of Melbourne
1962
Award - New York University Medal
1962
Award - Mueller Medal, Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science
1963
Award - James Spence Medal, British Paediatric Association
1965 - 1969
Award - President, Australian Academy of Science
1966 - 1977
Career position - Writer and elder statesman of science, University of Melbourne
1967
Award - Silver Medal, l'Institut de Microbiologie et d'Hygiene de l'Université de Montreal, Canada
1967
Award - Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene Medal
1969
Award - Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) - President of the Australian Academy of Science
1971
Award - First International Congress of Immunology Award
1973
Award - Distinguished Service Award, International Association of Allergy
1974
Award - Doctor of Science (DSc), honoris causa, University of Newcastle
1 Aug 1977 - 11 Aug 1977
Award - Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal
1978
Award - Knight of the Order of Australia (AK) - for extraordinary and meritorious service to medicine and to science particularly in the fields of microbiology and immunology

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

  • Frank Macfarlane Burnet - Records, 1924 - 1976, MS 098; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details
  • Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine, c. 1936 - c. 1940, MS 052; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

The University of Melbourne Archives

  • Frank Macfarlane Burnet - Records, 1880 - 1986, 89/34; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details

Wellcome Collection

  • Victoria Eugenics Society, 1940 - 1961, SA/EUG/E.4; Eugenics Society [SA/EUG]; Wellcome Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

Articles

Books

  • Burnet, F. M.; and Clark, Ellen, Influenza: a survey of the last 50 years in the light of modern work on the virus of epidemic influenza (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1942), 118 pp. Details
  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane, Changing Patterns an Atypical Autobiography (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1968), 282 pp. Details
  • Burnet, Macfarlane, Endurance of Life: the Implication of Genetics for Human Life (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1978), 230 pp. Details
  • Burnet, Macfarlane, Sir, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, 1915-1965 (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1971), 193 pp. Details
  • McCarthy, Gavan; Manhal, Oscar; O'Sullivan, Lisa; Sherratt, Tim, A Guide to the Records of Frank Macfarlane Burnet (Melbourne: Australian Science Archives Project, 1993), 156 pp. Details
  • Sexton, Christopher, The Seeds of Time: the Life of Sir Macfarlane Burnet (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992), 301 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Beale, R, 'Frank Macfarlane Burnet' in Australia's Nobel Laureates - Adventures in Innovation (Sydney: ABIE Australian Business and Investment Explorer, 2004), pp. 44-53. Details
  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane, 'Kellaway, Charles Halliley (1889-1952), medical scientist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 9: 1891 - 1939 Gil-Las, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983), pp. 546-547. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kellaway-charles-halliley-6910. Details
  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane, 'The Clonal Selection Theory af Acquired Immunity' in Milestones in Immunology: A Historical Exploration, Debra Jan Bibel, ed. (London: Science Tech, 1988), pp. 185-187. Details
  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane; Fenner, Frank, 'The Production of Antibodies' in Milestones in Immunology: A Historical Exploration, Debra Jan Bibel, ed. (London: Science Tech, 1988), pp. 181-184. Details
  • Mazumdar, Pauline M. H., 'Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, 1899-1985' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
  • Nossal, G. J. V., 'Burnet, Sir Frank Macfarlane (1899-1985), medical scientist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 17: 1981 - 1990 A-K, Diane Langmore, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 160-164. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burnet-sir-frank-macfarlane-mac-12267. Details
  • Park, Hyung Wook, 'Burnet, Frank Macfarlane' in New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Koertge, Noretta, ed., vol. 1 (Detroit : Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008), pp. 454-459 . Details

Conference Proceedings

  • Radiation Biology: Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Radiation Biology held at the University of Melbourne, 15-18 December, 1958 edited by Martin, J.H. (New York: Academic Pres Inc., 1959), https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/5561618. Forward, pages v - vii. Details

Gazette Articles

Journal Articles

  • Anderson, Warwick, 'The Military Spur to Australian Medical Research', Health and History, 15 (1) (2013), 80-103. Details
  • Anderson, Warwick and Mackay, Ian R., 'Fashioning the Immunological Self: the Biological Individuality of F. Macfarlane Burnet', Journal of the History of Biology, 47 (1) (2014), 147-75. Details
  • Burnet, F. M., 'Changes of twenty-five years in the outlook on infectious diseases', Medical Journal of Australia, 1939 (1) (1939), 23-8. Details
  • Burnet, F. M., 'Section I & N - Medical Science, National Health and Physiology. The nature of immunity Australia [presidential address]', Report of the 27th meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (1949), 106-12. Details
  • Burnet, F. M., 'Derrick and the story of Q fever', Medical Journal of Australia, 1967 (2) (1967), 1067-8. Details
  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane, 'David Orme Masson', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, 25 (1958), 530-532. Details
  • Crust, Eileen; Tauber, Alfred A., 'Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological Imagination: TheThought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet', Biology & Philosophy, 15 (4) (2000), 509-533. Details
  • D'Alessandro, Deanna, 'An Australian chemist just won the Nobel prize. Here's how his work is changing the world', The Conversation (2025), https://doi.org/10.64628/AA.gngddnm37. Details
  • Fenner, F. J., 'Frank Macfarlane Burnet, 3 September 1899 - 31 August 1985, elected F.R.S. 1942', Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 33 (1987), 101-62. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1987.0005. Details
  • Fenner, Frank, 'Frank Macfarlane Burnet, 1899-1985', Historical Records of Australian Science, 7 (1) (1987), 39-77. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9870710039. Details
  • Flesch, Juliet and McPhee, Peter, '150 Years, 150 Stories: Frank Macfarlane Burnet', Uni News, 12 (15) (2003), 4. Details
  • Gault, E. W., 'Cameron, Burnet and Willis - three Australian pathologists', Indian Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 14 (1971), 53-67. Details
  • Mackay, I. R., 'The 'Burnet Era' of Immunology: Origins and Influence', Immunology and Cell Biology, 69 (5) (1991), 301-305. Details
  • Mackay, I. R., 'Burnet Oration: Auto-immunity, Paradigms of Burnet and Complexities of Today', Immunology and Cell Biology, 70 (1992), 159-171. Details
  • Marchalonis, John J., 'Burnet and Nossal: the Impact of Immunology on the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute', Quarterly Review of Biology, 69 (1994), 53-67. Details
  • Nossal, G. J. V., 'Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet (1899-1985)', Nature, 317 (1985), 108. Details
  • Nossal, Gustav, 'Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, OM, FRS, Nobel Laureate, 1899-1985', Eureka Street, 9 (7) (1999), 22-27. Details
  • Park, Hyung Wook, 'Germs, Hosts, and the Origin of Frank MacFarlane Burnet's Concept of "Self" and "Tolerance", 1936-1949', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 61 (4) (2006), 492-534. Details
  • Roberts-Thomson, Peter J.; Jackson, Michael W.; and Gordon, Thomas P., 'A Seminal Monograph: Mackay and Burnet's Autoimmune Diseases', Medical Journal of Australia, 196 (1) (2012), 74-6. Details
  • Sankaran, N., 'Mutant Bacteriophages, Frank Macfarlane Burnet and the Changing Nature of 'Genespeak' in the 1930s', Journal of the History of Biology, 43 (2010), 571-599. Details
  • Sankaran, N., 'The Pluripotent History of Immunology', Avant: the Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, 3 (1) (2012), 37-54. Details
  • Sankaran, Neeraja, 'Stepping-stones to One-step Growth: Frank Macfarlane Burnet's Role in Elucidating the Viral Nature of the Bacteriophages', Historical Records of Australian Science, 19 (1) (2008), 83-100, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR08004. Details
  • Sankaran, Neeraja, 'Mutant Bacteriophages, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, and the Changing Nature of "Genespeak" in the 1930s', Journal of the History of Biology (2009). Details
  • Sankaran, Neeraja, 'Setting Patterns: the Atypical Choices That Shaped the Career of Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet in Twentieth-Century Australia', Korean Journal for the History of Science, 35 (2013), 343-64. Details
  • Sankaran, Neeraja, 'From Plaques to Pocks: Carrying over Bacteriophage Assay Techniques to the Study of Influenza and Other Animal Viruses.', Medical History (2025), 1-14, https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10024. Details
  • Wood, I. J., 'Appreciation of Frank Macfarlane Burnet', Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medical Science, 43 (1965), 327-336. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

See also

Digital resources

Title
Burnet, Frank Macfarlane (1899 - 1985)
Type
Image
Publisher
CSIRO Publishing

Details

Title
Burnet, Frank Macfarlane (1899 - 1985)
Type
Image
Publisher
Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre

Details

Gavan McCarthy; Ken McInnes

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 22 October 2025

EOAS ID: biogs/P000279b.htm

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