- Australian
physician, an authority on immunology and viral diseases such as influenza,
poliomyelitis, and cholera. He shared the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physiology
or Medicine with immunologist Peter Medawar for his work on skin grafting.
Burnet was born in E Victoria and studied at Melbourne and London
universities. From 1927 he was associated with the Walter and Eliza
Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, becoming its director
1944.
Burnet was the first to investigate the multiplication mechanism of
bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria) and devised a method
for identifying bacteria by the bacteriophages that attack them. In
1932 he developed a technique for growing and isolating viruses in
chick embryos; this was to be used as a standard laboratory procedure
for more than 20 years.
In 1949 Burnet predicted that an individual's ability to produce a
particular antibody to a particular antigen was not innate, but developed
during the individual's life. In 1951 Medawar carried out the experiments
that confirmed this theory.
Burnet's second major contribution to immunology was made in 1957
- his 'clonal selection' theory of antibody formation, which explains
why a particular antigen stimulates the production of its own specific
antibody.
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