AUSTRALIAN FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE, 2005

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, 12-13 April

Introduction
Dr Jim Peacock, President, Australian Academy of Science

I have a very pleasant job today, to introduce Suzanne Cory to you. Suzanne Cory is Director of this Institute, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. She is one of Australia’s most distinguished scientists, a molecular biologist who, over her career, has been trying to understand some aspects of how humans function and also to investigate and understand some deviations from perfect health. Suzanne and her husband, Jerry Adams, have made really wonderful contributions into a number of fields. Some years ago they contributed greatly to an understanding of how we actually generate a huge diversity of antibodies, so they really invented the ‘Lego system’ of antibody production. Then they worked a great deal on understanding a particular chromosomal mutation that results in Burkitt’s lymphoma, a particular cancer disease. And in recent years, along with some of their colleagues, they have been looking at the control of programmed life or death of cells. This is of huge importance in our bodies. It is important for some of our cells to die at particular times, and at other times it is better that they live. In any event, we always need that choice to be well controlled or it can lead to cancers or other diseases.

Suzanne, all this time, has been a wonderful citizen of science in Australia. She has made a lot of contributions to the broader conduct of science in Australia and she has been very interested in helping science education in schools, and she does a lot of that from her position as a member of the Council of the Australian Academy of Science.