Historical Records Australian Science

Publishing

Historical Records of Australian Science

Volume 14, 2002–03 © Australian Academy of Science 2002

All enquiries and manuscripts should be directed to: Professor R. W. Home Department of History and Philosophy of Science The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic. 3010, Australia

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Published by CSIRO PUBLISHING for the Australian Academy of Science www.publish.csiro.au/journals/hras Historical Records of Australian Science, 2002, 14, 105–107

Frank Fenner and David Curtis (eds): innovative researchers. Under its four ‘pio- The John Curtin School of Medical neer’ professors, Hugh Ennor, John Eccles, Research: The First Fifty Years, Frank Fenner and Adrien Albert, the 1948–1998. Gundaroo: Brolga Press, School drew in a creative and expanding 2001, 565pp, illus., ISBN 875495 33 9 staff and a growing corps of PhD students (HB), $55. who both assisted in fuelling the research and fulfilled the School’s early purpose of providing a body of highly-trained medical researchers in Australia. Over the next fifty years, JCHMR embraced research over an expanding com- pass. It spread across the fields of neuro- science, microbiology, immunology, biochemistry, cell biology, human genetics, medical chemistry, clinical science, international health, and integrative biology, a span in biomedical research wider than most world medical research institutes and one that won the School and its researchers high international acclaim. Three staff members, John Eccles, Peter Doherty and ‘The John Curtin School of Medical Rolf Zinkernagel, were awarded the Nobel Research’, writes its present director Judith Prize; Frank Fenner won the prestigious Whitworth in her foreword to the book, Japan Prize for a cumulative contribution ‘was created as a unique institution, and a to medical science; fifteen JCSMR unique institution it remains... [I]ts glitter- researchers were elected Fellows of the ing prizes’, she adds, ‘are unequalled in the Royal Society of London, and thirty five history of medical research in Australia’. Fellows of the Australian Academy of This blockbuster volume, edited by two Science. The School trained five hundred distinguished former JCSMR directors, and twenty-six PhD graduates and pro- Frank Fenner and David Curtis, and duced sixty-four books and 8354 refereed drawing on some eighty-nine present or journal papers or book chapters. former in-house contributors for overviews The editors have set out to cover this of their and their colleagues’ research, large terrain in three sections. Part 1 traces clearly confirms this claim. It reveals the the School’s institutional history, its growth complex growth of the institution, its sig- and change; Part II provides ‘Highlights of nificant personnel, and the rich stream of Research’, and Part III Appendices gives biomedical research that emerged during lists of details of academic staff, visiting this half century of Australia’s history. fellows, graduate students, external grants, The John Curtin School of Medical and services to outside organisations by Research, established with generous Com- members of JCSMR. Throughout, photo- monwealth funding in 1948 as one of the graphs and brief biographies of key partici- four founding Research Schools of the pants are interwoven with text. The John Australian National University, was Curtin School of Medical Research attends launched under the influential guidance carefully to support and administrative and planning of medical expatriate Sir staff, and it provides a separate name and Howard Florey. It quickly attracted many subject index.

As such this exhaustive work represents biological inorganic chemistry, Murray a remarkable archival source. It will be Valley encephalitis, Ross River virus infec- especially useful to students of science, tions, malarial disease, the neurophysio- medicine and history eager to explore such logy of the spinal chord, nerve growth topics as the development of medical factors, the neurophysiology of vision, research, the culture or sociology of a retinal research, the mysteries of cellular medical institution, the role of women motion, the smallpox eradication pro- therein, the changing part played by tech- gramme, spinal excitatory and inhibitory nology, technicians and engineers in bio- pathways, urban biology, and many more. medical research, animal breeding Having said this, this work is not an approaches, and the mobility of scientists, evaluative history. Despite a plethora of to suggest a few. David Curtis’s account of external reviews of the John Curtin School ‘Life in Eccles’ laboratory’ provides a across its history and a broad range of particular insight from a one-time student interplay of directors of differing tempera- into the exciting early environment of the ment and style, those looking for crucial School at a time that Eccles himself judgement on the problems, conflicts, and acknowledged ‘marked the highpoint’ of progress of a medical research establish- his research career. ment which ‘with its many forceful per- The heart of the book lies in Part II sonalities has’, in the words of its present ‘Highlights of Research’ with its overviews director, ‘had its fair share of controversy’, and some brief detailed accounts of funda- will not find it in these pages. Such critical mental research performed in the school on assessments remain to be made. Rather, subjects that stretch through transplantation Fenner and Curtis as writers and editors immunobiology, molecular virology, genet- have given us a monumental documentary record of one of Australia’s pre-eminent ics of the HLA system, myxomatosis, pop- medical research organisations that will ulation genetic studies, computation and long serve to inform and underpin histori- informatics in biomedical science, cardio- cal knowledge. vascular disease, coronary heart disease in Papua New Guinea, malignant hypo- Ann Moyal thermia, immunological responses to influ- Independent Scholars Association, enza, research on HIV/AIDS vaccine, Canberra