Gustav Nossal was born in Austria in 1931 and along with his family emigrated in 1939 in the wake of the German occupation. The family settled in Sydney, Australia, where Gustav attended St Aloysius' College and studied medicine at the University of Sydney. His research career began at WEHI in 1957 under the guidance of Sir Macfarlane Burnet. Nossal's area of research expertise was immunology. In 1965, Burnet retired as WEHI Director and was succeeded by the 34-year-old Nossal, who held the post until his "retirement" in 1996. During Nossal's tenure as Director, WEHI expanded the scope of its research and occupied a new purpose-built facility in Parkville in 1986. Sir Gustav has attracted many supreme honours from Australia and the world at large. He is the Honorary Governor and Patron of WEHI. As of 2005, he remains deeply committed to humanitarian causes, including his work with the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organisation, a particular focus being childhood vaccination in the developing world.

Donald Metcalf was born in Mittagong, New South Wales, in 1929 and attended a variety of country schools. Like Gustav Nossal and Jacques Miller, Metcalf graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney. He began his research at WEHI in 1954 as the Carden Fellow in Cancer Research of the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria. In 1966, he became Deputy Director of WEHI and the Head of its Cancer Research Unit. In addition, he worked for periods of one to two years as a visiting scientist in Boston, Buffalo, Lausanne, Rijswijk and Cambridge UK. His many groundbreaking studies in haematology include the discovery and development of the regulatory colony stimulating factors (CSFs), now widely used in clinical medicine to promote blood-cell formation. His work has been honoured by election to scientific academies in Australia, the UK and the US and by the awarding of many prestigious international research prizes. His "retirement" as Assistant Director in 1996 notwithstanding, he remains in active laboratory research at WEHI on the regulation of normal and leukaemic blood cells.

Jacques Miller was born in France in 1931 and spent much of his childhood in Switzerland and China. With his family, he migrated to Australia in 1941, just prior to the Japanese entry into World War II. The family settled in Sydney, where Miller (like Nossal) attended St Aloysius' College and studied medicine at the University of Sydney (like both Nossal and Metcalf). In 1958, he obtained a Fellowship that enabled him to study for his PhD at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London. Miller's work on leukaemia led him to discover the immunological function of the thymus. In 1966, he returned to Australia, having been invited by WEHI's Director, Gus Nossal, to be Head of the institute's Experimental Pathology Unit. For his discoveries in the UK and Australia, Miller has been awarded the highest international academic honours, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London. Like Nossal and Metcalf, Miller "retired" in 1996, but he remains active in a scholarly role in the field of immunology at WEHI.

Ian Mackay was born in Melbourne in 1922 and spent much of his childhood in Perth. He attended various schools and completed his secondary school education at Melbourne Grammar. He graduated MBBS in 1945 from the University of Melbourne with MD in 1952. While his early graduate years included bouts of TB, he served with the Australian Military Mission, Berlin, Germany in 1948-1949. Mackay undertook medical research in the UK and USA before moving to WEHI in 1955, where he became Head of the Clinical Research Unit in 1963. Mackay became fascinated by the then unfashionable idea of autoimmunity as a cause of disease. In 1963, he and Macfarlane Burnet published a definitive monograph on the subject, firmly placing autoimmunity on the research map. Mackay defined major autoimmune diseases of the liver and devised a life-saving protocol for autoimmune hepatitis that remains standard today. He also advanced knowledge on many other expressions of autoimmunity. Since retiring from WEHI in 1987, Mackay has co-edited the standard international text, The Autoimmune Diseases.

Margaret Holmes was born in Kew, Victoria, in 1921 and attended Ruyton Girls' School. Employed at WEHI as a junior laboratory technician, she subsequently undertook a science course at the University of Melbourne, initially part time. Her first interest at the university was epidemiology, which she studied further at the Central Public Health Laboratory at Colindale, London and later at Fairfield Hospital, Melbourne. Holmes rejoined WEHI in 1958 and became Manager in the late 1970s. Her main responsibilities included the selection, training and supervision of laboratory technical staff and the development of Laboratory Animal Services. She also had a major role in the design and construction of the animal breeding facilities at the Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Laboratories at Kew. In the early and mid 1980s, she was closely involved in the design and construction of the laboratories in the current Parkville building, liaising between scientific staff and the architects. Holmes officially retired in December 1986, but has continued her relationship with WEHI as honorary gardener at the Kew campus.