C ENTENARYSir Franl
Burnet became pathology registrar atThe Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in1923, thus beginning an association thatwas to last over 42 years . C h arlesKellaw ay was appointed the seconddirector of the Hall Institute in that year,and immediately set about planning thefurther training of someone he im m ediatelyrecognised as a m ost significantprotege. In 1925, Burnet set sail for Londonto work for two years at the fa m ousLister Institute under the directorship ofC. J. Martin . T he only other interruptionto Burnet's work in Melbourne was a twoyears tin t ( 1932-34) at the Nation alInstitute for Medical Research in Londonunder th e great Sir Henry Dale.Burnet became Assistant Director ofthe Hall Institute in 1927 and Directorin 1944. Kellaway declined to backBurnet for the top job, believing thatadministrative responsibilities wouldtake away from Burnet's laboratory benchtime and worrying that his shyness andabsence of obvious leadership skillsmight set the Hall Institute back. TheBoard ruled otherwise and Burnet provedhimself to be an outstanding and inspiringDirector for a full 21 years. After hisretirement in 1965, Burnet moved to asuite in th e Microbiology Department ofThe University of Melbourne, where hedevoted himself to scientific, popular andphilosophical writings. During the next15 years, there was a phenomenal yieldof 16 books an d coun tless lectures andarticles, attesting to th e extraordinaryrange of his sch olarship an d industry.Burnet died on 3 1 August 1985, just threedays short of his 86th birthday.Let m e close this sharply truncatedcurriculum vitae by referring to SirMacfarlane's fa mily. H e became engagedto Linda Druce, a young teacher, in 1926and they married in 1928. It was a closeand enduring partnership, Linda throwingh er considerable intelligence and energyinto supportin g Burn et 's career andsharing in both his trials and triumphs,until her death in 1973. The Burnets hadthree children, Elizabeth, Ian andDeborah, who took a keen interest in hiswork and in the Hall Institute. Deborah(tragically no longer with us) in factworked as her father's research assistantin the early 1960s. In later years, Burnettook great joy in his seven grandchildren.In 1976, Burnet married H azel Jenkin, awidow ed volunteer librarian in theMicrobiology Sch ool and a form erconcert singer. They spent a companion able decade together in her com fortablehom e in Canterbury.T o u n derstand Burnet 's scientifi ccontribution, we must project ourselvesback to 1923, a much simpler time inm edical science. The differences betweenviruses and bacteria were u n derstoodonly in the m ost shadowy way. The genewas a theoretical concept. DNA as theGraduation, 1918genetic material was still three decadesaway, as was the polio vaccine. Scientificequ ipment was simple an d ch eap: amicroscope, som e pipettes, test tubes,syringes and n eedles, bacterial growthmedia, an incubator, a centrifuge and am odest supply of laboratory animals. Inm ost fields, what was needed was notsom e sm all increm ental addition toknowledge but a blazing insight toilluminate the darkn ess.Burnet and the Secret of Life, 1923-33Burnet 's scientific w ork can be brokeninto three phases, though these overlapand the strands intertwine. We can termthem 'Burnet the searcher after the secretof life' ( 1923-1933); 'Burnet the microbehunter'( 1933-195 7); and 'Burnet theexplorer of the body's natural defencesystem ' (1957-1965).In a sense, Burnet stumbled on hisfirst research field. Doin g a routinebacterial culture on the urine of a patientw ith a kidney infection, Burnet noticedtwo large clear areas on the otherwiseu n iform lawn of bacterial growth . Herealised that these must have representedthe growth of what d'Herelle haddescribed a few years earlier-bacteriophages,literally eaters of bacteria. Burnetworked out m ethods by which a singlebacteriophage infected a single bacterium.Nothing happened for 40 minutes butthen, all of a sudden 50 bacteriophageswere released. There could be only oneexplanation. A virulent organism musthave multiplied in the host bacterial cell,finally killing it and releasing 50 progenyin a single burst. Burnet further workedout that there were instances where thephage did not kill the bacterial cell.Instead it slipped unnoticed into thehereditary constitution of the bacterium,that is, into what we would now call thebacterial genome.The ability of the bacterial cell tocarry the genes of an extrinsic virus wasa truly novel concept. The amazing thingabout Burnet's probing the secrets ofphage behaviour was that, a decade later,Luria, Delbrl.ick and others were to pickup the findings and build on them theskeletal structure of the new sciences ofmicrobial genetics and molecularbiology. Not for the only time in his life,Burnet was years ahead of the field in histhin king.Burnet the Microbe-Hunter, 1933-57Bu rnet t h e microbe-hun ter emergedduring his second stint in London. By theearly 1930s, the critical differencesbetween bacteria and viruses werebecom ing apparent. T h e NationalInsti tute for Medical Research wasprominent in the field. There inHampstead viruses were visualised forthe firs t time, and their size measuredm ore or less accu rately by passagethrough graded filters.But on e bad bottleneck rem ained.Viruse could not be grown in the testtube and in fact m ost had not beenisolated in pure form at all. Top priorityin Ham pstead was given to influenza, forV oLUME 9 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 23