Macfarlane Burnet

Burnet earned his medical degree from the University of Melbourne in 1924 and a PhD from London four years later, then spent the next four decades at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, serving as its director from 1944 to 1965. Along the way he identified the agents behind Q-fever and psittacosis, cracked how influenza strains recombine, and refined the egg-based virus culture methods that still underpin flu vaccine production. His theory of clonal selection reshaped immunology, explaining how the body generates its vast antibody repertoire. Australia named him its first Australian of the Year in 1960, the same year Stockholm called; he later became the first Knight of the Order of Australia and collected the Lasker, the Copley, and honorary doctorates across three continents before retiring from Melbourne in 1978.