Who was Frank Macfarlane Burnet?
Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was an Australian virologist and immunologist who shared the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering acquired immunological tolerance, which helped make organ transplants possible.
Burnet was born in Traralgon, Victoria, in 1899 and studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. He spent much of his career at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, which he led from 1944 to 1965.
In his early career, he studied viruses, including those that cause influenza, and developed methods for growing viruses in chicken eggs.
Immune tolerance
Burnet proposed that the immune system learns to distinguish between self and non-self early in life. British scientist Peter Medawar later confirmed this through experiments, and the two shared the Nobel Prize in 1960.
Burnet also developed the clonal selection theory, which explains how the immune system produces specific antibodies to fight infections. This theory is still central to modern immunology.
Burnet was named the first Australian of the Year in 1960. He wrote many books on science and society. The Burnet Institute, a medical research organization in Melbourne, is named in his honor.
Did You Know?
Burnet's research helped improve understanding of diseases such as influenza, polio and myxomatosis.