Frank Macfarlane Burnet - Academic Foundations

Academic Foundations

From 1917, Burnet attended the University of Melbourne, where he lived in Ormond College on a residential scholarship. There, he read more of Darwin's work and was influenced by the ideas of science and society in the writings of H. G. Wells. He enjoyed his time at university and spent much of his free time reading biology books in the library to feed his passion for scientific knowledge. He also had fleeting sporting success, holding down a position in Ormond's First VIII rowing squad for a brief period. He continued to pursue his study of beetles in private, although his classmates found out and there was no loss in this as they viewed his hobby positively. Despite an ongoing shyness, Burnet got on well with staff and students at university. Burnet was self-motivated and often skipped lectures to study at his own faster pace and pursue further knowledge in the library, and he came equal first in physics and chemistry in first year. The following year, 1918, he became increasingly immersed in laboratory work, but he was also dogged by peer pressure to enlist in the military, which he saw as a distasteful prospect. However, this was averted by the end of the war. In 1919, he was one of 12 high-performing students selected for extra tuition, and he came equal first in third year physiology. He began clinical work in the same year, but found it somewhat unpleasant as he was interested in diagnosing the patient and had little interest in showing empathy towards them.

While at university, he became an agnostic; he was sceptical of religious faith, which he regarded as "an effort to believe what common sense tells you isn't true." He was also disgusted by what he regarded as hypocritical conduct by religious adherents. Towards the later years of his undergraduate years, his unhappiness with religion began to dog him to a greater extent. He tried to become involved with communism for brief period but then resolved to devote himself to scientific research. The length of time required to study medicine had been reduced to five years to train doctors faster following the outbreak of World War I, and Burnet graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery in 1922, ranking second in the final exams despite the death of his father a few weeks earlier. His fellow graduates included Ian Wark, Kate Campbell, Jean Macnamara, Rupert Willis and Roy Cameron, who became distinguished scientists in their own right.

He then did a ten-month residency at Melbourne Hospital to gain experience before going into practice. The new graduates spent four months in the medicine ward, another four in surgery, and the remaining two in casualty. In the surgery ward he worked under John Gordon and Alan Newton, both well known surgeons. He enjoyed this period immensely and was disappointed when he had to do his medicine residency. However, he was soon engrossed in his work, having been inspired by the neurologist Richard Stawell, whom Burnet came to idolise. As a result of this he became intent on a career clinical neurology, and he wrote a theoretical paper about testing sensory losses following peripheral nerve lesions, but his submission to the Clinical Report of the Melbourne Hospital was rejected. Burnet applied to be medical registrar as part of his clinical career path, but the medical superintendent of Melbourne Hospital, who was in charge of such appointments, deemed Burnet's character and personality more suited to a laboratory research career, and asked Burnet to withdraw his application in return for the post of senior resident pathologist, which would become vacant in the following months. Burnet complied.

During the transition period he worked as a pathological registrar at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and also prepared for his Doctor of Medicine examinations, late in 1923. In 1923 he took up the post of senior resident pathologist at the Melbourne Hospital; the laboratories were a part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. He conducted research into the agglutinin reactions in typhoid fever, leading to his first scientific publications. He decided to work full-time on the antibody response in typhoid, even though he was technically supposed to pursuing pathology as part of his obligations to the hospital. Burnet came first in the Doctor of Medicine exams by a long distance, and his score was excluded from the scaling process so that the other students would not fail for being so far behind.

At the time, the Hall Institute was in the early stages of rapid expansion. The new director of the Institute, Charles Kellaway, wanted to increase the activities of the organisation to not only support hospital operations but have separate research groups in physiology, microbiology and biochemistry that would also do independent studies. He also hoped to raise the standards to make the Institute comparable to the world-class operations in Europe and America. Kellaway took a liking to Burnet and saw him as the best young talent in the Institute with the ability to help raise it to world leading standards. However, he thought that Burnet would need experience working in a laboratory in England before he could lead his own research group on bacteriology in Australia. Burnet left Australia for England in 1925 and served as ship's surgeon during his journey in exchange for a free fare. On arrival, he took a paid position assisting the curator of the National Collection of Type Cultures at the Lister Institute in London. Burnet prepared or maintained bacteria cultures for other researchers in the morning and was free to do his own experiments in the afternoon. During the latter half of 1926, he experimented to see if Salmonella typhimurium was affected by bacteriophage.

He was awarded the Beit Memorial Fellowship by the Lister Institute in 1926; this gave him enough money for him to resign his curator position and he began full-time research on bacteriophages. He injected mice with bacteriophage and observed their immunological reactions and believed bacteriophages to be viruses. For this work he received a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1928 under the direction of Professor J. D. Ledingham and was invited to write a chapter on bacteriophages for the Medical Research Council's System of Bacteriology. He was also given an invitation to deliver a paper at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1927 on the link between O-agglutinins and bacteriophage. Burnet began attending the Fabian Society functions and befriended some communists, although he refrained from joining them in overt left-wing activism. He also spent his free time enjoying theatre, engaging in amateur archaeology and cycling through continental Europe.

While in London, Burnet became engaged to fellow Australian Edith Linda Marston Druce. She was a secondary school teacher and daughter of a barrister's clerk and the pair had met in 1923 and had a few dates but did not keep in touch. Druce sought out Burnet while on a holiday in London and they quickly agreed to marriage although she had to return to Australia. They married in 1928 after he had completed his Ph.D. and returned to Australia, and had a son and two daughters. At the time, there was a vacancy for the Chair of Bacteriology at the University of London, and Ledingham was lobbying his colleagues to offer Burnet the post, but Burnet returned to Australia, partly because of Druce.