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Reflections, Frank Fenner 327 Chapter 18. Reflections, Frank Fenner In this final chapter, I want to reflect on two matters, one that spanned my working life, namely special friendships, and the other an analysis of the relative importance of nature, nurture and chance, as they affected my father and myself. Special Friends Friendships are an important element in everyone©s life. Lifelong friendship with one©s wife is the most important and one that I enjoyed in full measure, but I have had many other friends. Here I want to acknowledge the debt I owe to several special friends who have been important to me at various periods of my life, many of who still are. I mention a number of them at some length in the ©boxes© in earlier chapters; those who were close personal friends were Ted Ford, Cecil Hackett, Francis Ratcliffe, Ian Marshall, Gwen Woodroofe, D. A. Henderson and Isao Arita. Two of my mentors, Macfarlane Burnet and René Dubos, were also close friends. Here I will list some other friends chronologically and alphabetically and provide a few comments on each of them. School Days The one person who I remember as a special friend from primary school days is John Dowie, a noted sculptor and painter who still lives in the same house as he did in the 1920s. I greatly enjoyed visiting him in his house and studio, with my sister Winn and my brother Bill, as recently as April 2005. The one person I remember from Thebarton Technical High School is Alf Chittoch, who I met again when I visited Tennant Creek in 1968, where he has lived since the war and risen from being a `battler' in the mines to Mayor. We have maintained annual correspondence ever since. University Days The friend that I remember best from Adelaide High School and university days is Denis Shortridge, who subsequently became an ophthalmologist in Sydney. Later he moved back to Adelaide and I used to visit him every time I went there until he died in the mid-1990s. In recent years, whenever I visit Adelaide I arrange to have lunch at the Army and Navy Club with all those of my year at medical school who are able to come. We had a special meal there in 1994 to which about a dozen came; now the `regulars' have fallen to two, Alan Campbell and Malcolm Newland. Army Days My best friend in early Army days was Noel Bonnin, a surgeon who was six years older than me but who was initially in the same unit as I was (2/6 Field 328 Nature, Nurture and Chance Ambulance) and carried out some research with me when we were in the Woodside Camp. Later, when we were both in the same unit in Lebanon (2/1 Casualty Clearing Station) we went on two wonderful week-long trips, first to Petra and then to Luxor and Aswan. Later my close friends in the 2/2 Australian General Hospital were Orme Smith, Ian Wood and Rod Andrew, and in New Guinea, Ted Ford. Melbourne Days I lived in Melbourne from October 1945 to August 1948, and again from February 1950 to November 1952. During the second period, Bobbie and I lived in and she looked after the houses and children of Alan and Mavis Jackson (I knew Alan in New Guinea as a pathologist and we co-authored one scientific paper) and Macfarlane and Linda Burnet. Both Bobbie and I became close friends of the Burnets and the Jacksons. Canberra Days Bobbie was a much more sociable person than I was, and several of my current friends in Canberra derive from her friendships. In the ANU and especially in the JCSMR, I met a very large number of people, many of whom became close friends. I also met a number of scientists during my overseas travels who became, and remain, close friends. Co-authorship of books was important in developing friendships. I will list some of them as Local Friends and Overseas Friends, arranged alphabetically. Local Friends Gordon Ada I knew Gordon from early Hall Institute days and he came to Canberra several times to give seminars here. In 1962, I tried to recruit him as Reader in Biochemical Microbiology, but the Hall Institute was still too attractive. Then, in 1968, he was appointed as my successor. I moved to CRES in 1973 and we became really close friends in 1991, when he came back to the School as a Visiting Fellow and occupied the office next to mine. Since then we have always had morning coffee together and discuss the woes of the modern world. Rod Andrew Rod was a senior physician in the 2/2 Australian General Hospital when I was there in 1942 and after I went to New Guinea he was deeply involved in looking after volunteers who had been given malaria at the LHQ Medical Research Unit. After the war he became Dean of the Monash Medical School, and in 1964 he was responsible for recommending the award of my first honorary degree (MD). I visited Monash University intermittently after that and, in April 2004, I gave the first Roderick Andrew Oration there. Chapter 18. Reflections, Frank Fenner 329 Stephen Boyden Stephen, an Englishman, worked with René Dubos a year after I did, and was subsequently appointed to the Department of Experimental Pathology in JCSMR. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1966 for his work in immunology, but in 1965 he had decided that he wanted to get away from reductionist science and transferred to my department in that year, to work on human ecology. He subsequently transferred to the new Department of Human Biology and in 1975 to CRES, where he worked until retirement in 1990. In 1991, following the interest expressed by several people in the audience when he gave a lecture at Questacon, he set up a non-governmental community body, the Nature and Society Forum, of which I became an early member and later a patron. I regard him as perhaps the most creative younger scientist whom I have known well (thus excluding Burnet), and he and his wife Rosemary have been among my closest friends, especially during the last decade. Ruth Conley Ruth was the nursing sister at Canberra Boys© Grammar School and a good friend of Bobbie©s. Since Bobbie©s death and her retirement to a cottage near the Yarralumla shops she kindly invites me to have lunch or dinner with her and other friends. Jack Crawford Jack was a senior public servant and a member of the tennis group that I had joined as soon as I was settled in Canberra. In 1960 he was appointed to the ANU as Director of the Research School of Pacific Studies, and from 1968 to 1973, a period coinciding with my term as Director of JCSMR, he was Vice-Chancellor. From the mid-1960s, we were very close friends, and he and his wife Jess played bridge with Bobbie and me every Saturday night for over a decade; we visited Jess every weekend after Jack died in 1984. Walter Crocker Coming from a South Australian farming family, Walter had extensive experience in the British diplomatic corps in Africa during the war. In 1948, Copland persuaded him to join the Research School of Pacific Studies as Professor of International Relations. We got to know him well because he built a house almost opposite ours in Torres Street, Red Hill. He transferred to the Australian diplomatic corps in 1952 and initially filled important posts in India and Indonesia. In 1956, he invited me and two colleagues to Indonesia for three weeks to advise him on the best location for a medical school in Sumatra. Then, in 1960±61, he organized a six-weeks visit for me to virology laboratories all over India. After he retired in 1970, he went back to his farm, but in 1973 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia; I stayed with him once 330 Nature, Nurture and Chance at a time when he was living in Government House. Eventually he retired to a house very near the beach at Grange, an Adelaide suburb on the coast. For many years I used to visit him there whenever I went to Adelaide; he always plied me with penetrating questions. He died in 2002 at the age of 100. David Curtis David had joined Jack Eccles as his first PhD student in 1954. He rose to be Professor of Pharmacology when that department was created in 1973 and was appointed Director of the JCSMR, 1989±92. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Science in 1965 and appointed President, 1986±90. He and his wife Laurie were always good friends and he hosted many lovely dinners which we enjoyed at his home in Campbell. In 1999±2001, we collaborated in producing a history of the first 50 years of the John Curtin School. Max Day Max Day was born on exactly the same day as I was, one year later. For many years, Max and his wife Barbara and Bobbie and I would celebrate our birthdays with dinners, alternately at our respective homes. In the early 1950s, he worked in CSIRO Entomology on the transmission of plant viruses and he was the first person with whom I collaborated in laboratory work in Canberra. I used to come up from Melbourne to work with him on the mechanical transmission of myxoma virus by mosquitoes. Later he became a member of the CSIRO Executive and then Chief of the CSIRO Division of Forestry.
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