An Australian Academy of
Science public lecture series on Fenner?s Science Today and
Tomorrow
Professor Andrew Cockburn FAA
Director of the College of Medicine, Biology &
Environment
Australian National University
One of the most remarkable features of Frank Fenner?s career
was his ability to move from fundamental and applied biomedical research at the
John Curtin School of Medical Research to found the multidisciplinary Centre for
Resource and Environmental Studies (now known as the Fenner School). This
lecture will focus on another aspect of his immense contribution ? his ability
to think laterally and recognize that he had unwittingly performed an extremely
significant replicated experiment on fundamental evolutionary biology. It will
review his ability to grasp the significance of the coevolution between rabbits
and the Myxoma virus, how that coevolution profoundly changed our view of
the evolution of disease, and how fifty years on, a new branch of medicine is
emerging from the perspective generated by Fenner?s experiment, with
paradigm-changing implications for public health practice.
Tuesday 4 October 2011, 6-7 pm
Refreshments
from 5.30 pm
Shine Dome, Gordon Street, Canberra
Free entry and parking
RSVPs essential
or 6201 9453
Biography
Andrew Cockburn is Professor of Evolutionary Ecology and
Director of the College of Medicine, Biology & Environment at the ANU, which
he joined in 1983. He has a doctorate from Monash University and studies
evolution in wild populations, exploiting unique features of Australian
organisms to probe questions that would otherwise be inaccessible. He is best
known for his research on marsupials in which males die shortly after mating,
and fairy-wrens, which are the least faithful of all birds. He is the author of
three books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. His research has
been honoured by numerous awards, including the Academy?s Gottschalk Medal, the
Serventy Medal of the Royal Australian Ornithologists Union, the Troughton Medal
of the Australian Mammal Society and the Edgeworth David Medal of the Royal
Society of NSW. He is the 2012 Tinbergen Lecturer of the Association for the
Study of Animal Behaviour.
