Person

Gurner, Colin Marshall (1919 - 2006)

AO CBE

Born
26 December 1919
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Died
13 September 2006
Occupation
Army officer, Medical practitioner and Radiologist

Summary

Colin M. Gurner was a medical practitioner and radiologist whose early career was at the Royal Adelaide and Adelaide Children's Hospitals and in private practice. Before that he served with the Australian Army Medical Corps during WWII, joining the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) after being discharged. Between 1951 and 1960 he was in partnership with his father, Colin Gurner, and J. Stanley Verco and Peter Verco in Adelaide. In 1960 Gurner joined the regular army as Deputy Director-General of Medical Services, and for the next 20 years was primarily involved with military planning and the provision of advise to government. He frequently made official visits overseas, including annually to Vietnam during that conflict. Increasingly he was concerned with the problems associated with conscription, resistant malaria and casualty evacuation. Gurner retired as Surgeon General of the Australian Defence Forces in 1979. Until he finally retired from medical practice he was involved with assessing the medical issues of intending immigrants, as Medical Director of the Australian Kidney Foundation, and with the Australian Defence Force Academy. Gurner was active in the College of Radiologists of Australasia, serving as President from 1971 to 1972. In 2003 he published a well-received history of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps from the close of WWII.

Details

Chronology

1939
Career event - Joined the Citizen Military Force
1942
Education - MB BS, University of Adelaide
1942 - 1943
Career position - Intern, Royal Adelaide Hospital
1943 - 1946
Career event - Served with the Australian Army Medical Corps
1946 - 1948
Career position - Surgical registrar (later radium officer), Royal Adelaide Hospital
1948 - 1950
Career position - Medical officer, radiology department, Royal Adelaide Hospital
1948 - 1960
Career position - Member, Citizen Military Forces
1950
Education - Member, Royal Australasian College of Physicians
1950 - 1951
Career position - Fellow in Radiation Therapy, Memorial Cancer Centre, New York, U.S.A.
1951
Education - Diploma of the American Board of Radiology (Radiation Therapy)
1951 - 1960
Career position - Partner in Verco radiology practice: J. S. Verco, P. W. Verco and C. Gurner snr
1952 - 1960
Career position - Assistant honorary in radiology, Adelaide Children's Hospital
1952 - 1960
Career position - Assistant honorary in radiology, Royal Adelaide Hospital
1957 - 1972
Award - Fellow, College of Radiologists of Australasia
1960 - 1967
Career position - Deputy Director-General Medical Services, Australian Army
1967 - ?
Award - Fellow, Royal Australian College of Medical Administrators
1967 - 1977
Career position - Director-General Medical Services, Australian Army
1969
Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
1969
Award - Commander of the British Empire (CBE)
1969 - 2006
Award - Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians
1969 - 2006
Award - Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons
1971 - 1972
Career position - President, College of Radiologists of Australasia
1972 - 1998
Award - Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Radiologists
1972 - 2006
Award - Honorary Fellow, Royal College of Radiologists, United Kingdom
1975 - 1977
Career position - Joint Services Medical Advisor
1977 - 1979
Career position - Surgeon General of the Australian Defence Forces
1978
Award - Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the medical branch of the Defence Force
1979
Career event - Retired from the Australian Defence Forces
1979 - 1984
Career position - Chairman, Medical Board, Australian Capital Territory
1980 - 1984
Career position - Commissioner, ACT Sub-district, St John Ambulance Brigade
1980 - 1985
Career position - Medical Officer, Department of Health, Australian Capital Territory
1982 - 1985
Career position - Medical Director (part-time), Australian Kidney Foundation
1985 - 1987
Career event - In private practice
1987 - 1993
Career position - Radiologist, Australian Defence Force Academy
1991
Award - Member of the Most Venerable Order Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (KStJ)
1993
Career event - Retired from medical practice
1998 - 2006
Award - Fellow, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists

Related Corporate Bodies

Related People

Published resources

Books

  • Gurner, Colin M., The Royal Australian Army Medical Corps: 1945-1975 (Prahran East: 2003), 137 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Gurner, C. M., 'Butler, Arthur Graham (1872-1949)' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 7: 1891 - 1939 A-Ch, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp. 502-503. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070507b.htm. Details
  • Gurner, C. M., 'Jeffries, Lewis Wibmer (1884-1971), Medical Practitioner and Soldier' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 9: 1891 - 1939 Gil-Las, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983), pp. 475-476. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A090467b.htm. Details
  • Gurner, C. M., 'Thompson, Clive Wentworth (1882-1941), medical practitioner and soldier' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 12: 1891 - 1939 Smy-Z, John Ritchie, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990), pp. 206-207. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120224b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

See also

  • Who's who in Australia 1995 (Melbourne: Information Australia Group, 1995), 1622 pp. Details
  • Royal Australasian College of Physicians, 'Gurner, Colin Marshall (1919 - 2006)', College roll, Royal Australian College of Physicians, Sydney, 2020, https://www.racp.edu.au/about/our-heritage/college-roll/college-roll-bio/gurner-colin-marshall. https://www.racp.edu.au/about/our-heritage/college-roll. Details
  • Ryan, James, Sutton, Keith and Baigent, Malcolm eds, Australasian Radiology: a History (Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 542 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P007278b.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 Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
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/P007278b.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