Sir (Frank) Macfarlane Burnet

For more information on Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, visit Britannica.com.

Australian virologist (1899–1985)

Burnet's father, a bank manager, had emigrated to Australia from Scotland as a young man. Burnet was born in Traralgon and studied medicine at Melbourne University, gaining his MD in 1924. After a period abroad at the Lister Institute, London, where he gained his PhD in 1928, Burnet returned to Melbourne to work at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute; he remained here until his retirement in 1965, having been its director since 1944.

From 1932 until 1933 Burnet worked with the Medical Research Council virology unit in London on influenza. He continued to work with the flu virus in Melbourne, searching for something more convenient than ferrets in which to cultivate the virus. Following the lead of Ernest Goodpasture, Burnet showed (1935) that flu virus could be grown in chick embryo (hen's eggs). While developing this new technique Burnet made an unexpected discovery. Adult hens could be infected with flu and, as was well known, develop antibodies against the virus. Yet the chicks born from the eggs used to grow the flu virus failed to develop any flu antibodies. It appeared that there was a period in development before which an organism was “immunologically illiterate”; it could not distinguish between its own tissue and alien tissue.

In 1949 Burnet drew the immunological conclusions from his work. If an antigen were injected into an animal before birth it should develop an immunological tolerance to that antigen, and consequently fail to produce antibodies if ever exposed later in life. But, Burnet discovered, this did not happen. While a young chick exposed to the antigen as an embryo would fail to develop antibodies, such chicks in adulthood display the usual intolerance and produce antibodies to the appropriate antigen. Burnet had failed to realise that the exposure to the antigen must be continuous for tolerance, not only to develop, but be maintained. The point was later established by Peter Medawar and his colleagues in 1953. It was for this work that Burnet shared the 1960 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Medawar.

Burnet himself found his work on antibodies more satisfying. How, he asked, are organisms able to respond so quickly and so effectively to antigens never before encountered? In 1957, in a paper entitled Antibody Production Using the Concept of Clonal Selection, Burnet argued that antibodies, or more accurately the lymphocytes that produce the antibodies, are so comprehensive in their diversity that there is likely to be an antibody in circulation to match any conceivable antigen. The lymphocytes are specialized cells and can respond to just one kind of antigen by producing the appropriately matching antibodies. Once stimulated, however, the lymphocytes will pump out vast numbers of antibodies indefinitely.

Burnet described his work on his clonal selection theory in his autobiography, Changing Patterns (1968).

The Australian virologist and physician Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985) made important contributions to virology, immunology, and human biology.

On Sept. 3, 1899, F. Macfarlane Burnet was born in the country town of Traralgon. He was a naturalist at heart, wandering in the bush to study animals, birds, and insects. After graduating as a doctor of medicine from Melbourne University in 1922, he studied staphylococcal infections at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne. He worked at the institute for 41 years, becoming director in 1942.

In 1930 Burnet discovered the existence of multiple strains of the poliomyelitis virus, essential knowledge for the production of vaccine. While visiting Sir Henry Dale in London in 1931, he observed the discovery of the influenza virus and mastered the developing-chick-embryo technique for virus culture. Returning to Australia in 1932, Burnet and his colleagues were the first to make influenza virus vaccine by the egg technique. In 1936 they discovered that Q fever, an infection in slaughter house workers, which had a worldwide distribution in humans, cattle, and sheep, was caused by a rickettsial organism. They also discovered, in 1952, the virus that causes the brain disease Murray Valley encephalitis, finding that it was carried by migrating birds from New Guinea and transmitted by mosquitoes to man.

Burnet possessed an insatiable desire to explore the unknown. He often thought of the inadequately explored field of immunology and theorized that at birth a person learned to tolerate his or her own tissues ("self") and to reject foreign tissues ("not-self"). A failure by a person to tolerate his or her own tissues might be produced by a freak mutation in the antibody-producing system, and a person would then attack his or her own organs to produce autoimmune disease. To prove these beliefs, in 1957 Burnet turned his researches to immunology with immediate success. His findings stimulated worldwide research in autoimmune disease. In 1960 he received the Nobel Prize for work on immunological tolerance.

In 1964 Burnet retired to write and lecture. From 1965 to 1969 he served as the president of the Australian Academy of Science. In 1969 he was made knight commander of the British Empire. That same year, he was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was made a Knight of the Order of Australia in 1978. Burnet's published works during this period included the books Immunology, Aging, and Cancer (1976) and Endurance of Life (1978). His own productive life came to an end on August 31, 1985, when he died of cancer in Melbourne.

On his seventieth birthday Burnet's disciples proclaimed him a charming colleague and a great scientist who had made a major contribution to the good of humankind. On that day Burnet concluded, "The real objective today is to use the ability of men and women … to devise ways by which patterns of behavior, laid down in a million years, can be modified - tricked and twisted if necessary - to allow tolerable human existence in a crowded world."

Further Reading

Burnet's life and work are delightfully described in his Changing Patterns: An Atypical Autobiography (1968); his studies in immunology are treated in his Self and Not-Self: Cellular Immunology (1969). Sarah R. Riedman and Elton T. Gustafson, Portraits of Nobel Laureates in Medicine and Physiology (1963), includes a discussion of Burnet. A short biography and his Nobel lecture is in the Nobel Foundation, Physiology or Medicine: Nobel Lectures, Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates' Biographies (3 vols., 1964-1967). Burnet's obituary appeared in The Lancet on 14 September 1985. A more recent biography is Frank Fenner, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, Scientist and Thinker (1987).

Glasgow-born son of John Burnet, educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, who joined his father's office in 1878. His Fine Arts Institute, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow (1879–80—demol-ished in 1967), was an essay in restrained Greek Revival, and anticipated the Classical Revival in England by many years. In 1886 another French-trained Scot, J. A. Campbell, became Burnet's partner, and they won the competition to design the Barony Church, Glasgow (1886–9, 1898–1900—now the ceremonial hall of Strathclyde University), influenced by Dunblane and Gerona Cathedrals, and by the work of Pearson (who was adjudicator during the competition). A series of low, broad-eavesed churches followed, including Shiskine, Arran (1887), the Gardner Memorial Church, Brechin (1896–1900), and the McLaren Memorial Church and Manse, Stenhousemuir (1897–1907). The firm also produced the fantastically eclectic Charing Cross Mansions, Glasgow (1891), in which C16 French themes may be perceived. In 1895, during a visit to the USA, Burnet met Charles McKim and Louis Sullivan, and almost immediately his work became profoundly influenced by American precedents (e.g. Atlantic Chambers, Hope Street, and Waterloo Chambers, Waterloo Street (both in Glasgow and both 1899, by which time the partnership had been dissolved (1897) ).

Burnet was commissioned in 1903 to design the extension to the British Museum, the King Edward VII Galleries, which had a Giant Order of three-quarters engaged Ionic columns that Burnet tilted slightly inwards so that the flutes ran parallel to the naked of the wall, avoiding awkward junctions. This Beaux-Arts building, one of the first of the Edwardian Neo-Classical reactions to the Baroque Revival and Wrenaissance, made his reputation, and he was knighted in 1914. By that time a London office had been opened, and in 1909 the Glasgow practice became a separate partnership under the Paris-trained Norman Aitken Dick (1883–1948). Burnet took on Thomas S. Tait as his personal assistant in 1903, and by 1910 the latter was a significant figure in the London office, becoming a partner in 1918. A fine essay in Beaux-Arts elevational treatment at General Buildings, 99 Aldwych (1909), demonstrates Tait's influence, while Kodak House, 65 Kingsway (1910–12—designed by Tait), admitted its steel frame and eschewed all overt references to the Orders. Adelaide House, London Bridge (1920–5), was one of the first large buildings of the 1920s to be consciously modelled on a monumental Egyptianizing style, and yet owed something to Sullivan: again, Tait was mostly responsible. By far the most impressive work of the firm (it had become in 1930 Burnet, Tait, & Lorne when Francis Lorne (1889–1963) became a partner) between the wars was St Andrew's House, Edinburgh (1934–9), to accommodate the Scottish Office: a symmetrical composition in the Beaux-Arts tradition, it was mainly the work of Tait (see tait entry).

Bibliography

• Architects' Journal, lvii/1486 (27 June 1923), 1066–1110
• Architectural Review, liv (Aug. 1923), 66–9
• Crook (1972)
• J. Curl (2001, 2005)
• Das Werk
• Eaton (1972)
• Gomme & Walker (1987)
• A. S. Gray (1985)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
• RIBA Journal (Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects), xlv/17 (18 Jul. 1938), 893–6, xlv/18 (15 Aug. 1938), 941–3
• Service (ed.) (1975)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)