1960

Burnet wins the Nobel Prize, for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance.

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet at the Nobel Prize giving ceremony in Stockholm, 1960.

Five Nobel Prize winners after their awards were presented. L-R: Professor Willard F Libby (Chemistry), Professor Sir Peter B Medawar (Medicine), Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (Medicine), Professor Donald A Glaser (Physics), and M St John Perse (Literature).

Co-recipients of the Nobel Prize for Medicine (1960), Sir Peter Brian Medawar (L) and Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet in conversation.

Burnet’s colleagues from the institute celebrate his Nobel Prize win at a party at Jimmy Watson’s bar, Carlton.

Staff celebrate Burnet’s Nobel Prize with a lunch at Jimmy Watson’s pub, Lygon Street, Carlton. From left to right: John Dineen, Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Jimmy Watson.

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Sir Peter Medawar are jointly awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance.

The discovery shows the immune system learns to recognise and tolerate its own cells, revolutionising our understanding of immunity and rejection.

According to the Nobel Prize organisation, “it is impossible to give, in a brief space, an adequate idea of the range and fundamental importance of Burnet’s work.”¹

An Australian Nobel Prize

Burnet is celebrated for being the first Australian to win a Nobel Prize for work undertaken within Australia.

At a time when most of his scientific contemporaries had pursued opportunities overseas, Burnet had chosen to remain in Australia, declining lucrative offers from leading research institutes in the UK and US. Over the course of his 60-year career he contributed profoundly to building the field of Australian medical science.

On the announcement of Burnet’s Nobel Prize in 1960, Prime Minister Bob Menzies says: “The honour conferred on Sir Macfarlane Burnet is an honour which every good Australian will enjoy”.²

1 Nobelprize.org. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet – Biographical. Available from: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1960/burnet-bio.html. Accessed June 2015.

2 The Canberra Times, 21 October 1960, p1

View related events

1923

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet begins his research career at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

1932

Liz and her little brother Ian join their father every Sunday, religiously, for a very different ritual to that of other Melbourne households of the era.

1949

Publication of Burnet’s first mention of his Nobel Prize-winning immune tolerance theory.

1952

The award is one of the most respected science prizes in the world, and frequently points to future Nobel Prize recognition.

1957

In 1957, Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet publishes a newly developed theory of the immune system in an obscure research journal. It contains what he later described as his greatest contribution to science, the theory of clonal selection of immunity.

1957

Gus Nossal starts at the institute, changing his research focus from virology to immunology.