Nobel Prize Recipient. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, an Australian virologist, received worldwide recognition after being awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Jointly, he shared this award with Peter Brain Medawar. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the two received the coveted award "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance." In 1949 he theorized that the ability to distinguish between one's own and foreign tissue is not an inherited factor, but is acquired during the fetal stage from the mother. The theory was substantiated when Medawar succeeded in performing transplants of tissue between different mouse fetuses. This discovery was a significance step in the pioneer research of organ transplantation. He received six nominations for the Nobel Candidacy. Born the second of seven children of a Scottish immigrant, who was a banker, he received his education in Victoria public schools, before entering Geelong College in Newtown, completing his medical course at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated M.B., B.S., in 1922, and M.D. in 1923. Excelling in his lessons, he received scholarships for his education. He found that he was more interested in diagnosing the patient's disease than hands-on bedside healing. Beginning his career, he accepted a position at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of the University of Melbourne in 1923, researching the agglutinin reactions in typhoid fever. From 1923 through 1924, he was a Resident Pathologist at the Melbourne Hospital. Leaving Australia for England, he was awarded a Beit Fellowship for Medical Research in 1926 to work for a year at the Lister Institute in London. He earned his PhD from the University of London in 1928, but returned to Australia to be with his family instead of accepting a position in England. In 1932 he spent a year at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. In 1935 he isolated a strain of influenza A virus in Australia, and subsequently did much work on serological variations of the influenza virus and on Australian strains of the swine influenza, publishing papers on variations in the virulence of influenza virus and on the calculated mutation rates. He published 13 textbooks on viruses and other subjects, which were noted for being easily understood. In 1940, he released his first book "Biological Aspects of Infectious Disease," which was published in numerous languages. Collaborating with colleagues during World War II, he continued with his research of an influenza vaccine for the military along with studying other viruses such as mumps, fowl plague, and Newcastle disease. Besides the many visits to various countries to give lectures, he held a post at the Hall Institute in Melbourne, before becoming the Director of the Institute and Professor of Experimental Medicine in the University of Melbourne in 1944 until his retirement in 1978. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received many honors and distinctions, among which the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London in 1942, where he was awarded the Royal Medal in 1947, the Copley Medal in 1959, and delivered the Croonian Lecture in 1950. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1952. He holds an honorary doctorate of the University of Cambridge, and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1953. In 1951 he was knighted, in 1958 received the Order of Merit and in 1969 received the Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He received the Gold and Silver Star from the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun in 1961. He was a founding member of the Australian Academy of Sciences, serving as President from 1965 to 1969. In 1960, he received the honor of being the first "Australian of the Year." He was the most highly honored scientist in Australia. In 1928 he married a school teacher, Edith Linda Marston Druce, and decided to settle in Australia, where the couple had a son and two daughters. His first wife died from lymphoid leukemia in 1973. Deeply moved by his wife's illness and suffering a grievous loss afterward, he was unable to work for over a year. In 1976 he remarried for a second time to a widow, Hazel G. Jenkins, who had helped him with publishing his books. He retired two years later. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1984 and even after a colon resection, the cancer returned within a year, dying within months. He was given a State Funeral and buried near to his grandparents, George Gilbert McKay and Hadassah McKay, with the relationship documented on his marker. Twice the Australian postage service has issued stamps with his image. The Burnet Clinical Research Unit of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute was also named in his honor in 1986. The country's largest research center was renamed the Macfarlane Burnet Centre for Medical Research.