Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska FAA FTSE – 2025 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
Professor Nalini Joshi AO FAA – named NSW Scientist of the Year in the 2025 Premier’s Prizes for Science & Engineering
Professor Brajesh Singh FAA – award for Excellence in Biological Sciences (ecological, environmental, agricultural and organismal) in the 2025 Premier’s Prizes for Science & Engineering
(08/09/1926 – 23/11/2025)
Professor Stuart Letham was elected to the Academy in 1983 for his discovery, naming, and characterisation of the cytokinins, a class of hormones that control cell division and other aspects of development in plants.
Professor Letham was born in New Zealand and studied at the University of Canterbury. He worked as an analytical chemist then as a biochemist with the New Zealand Department of Agriculture’s Ruakua Animal Research Station before moving to the University of Birmingham in the UK to complete his PhD. He returned to New Zealand to work at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research where he made significant discoveries in plant science. Professor Letham developed methods to separate plant cells from tissue and to grow fruit tissue in vitro: his paper on the latter was published in Nature in 1958.
Professor Letham moved to the Australian National University (ANU) in 1970 as Senior Fellow at the Research School of Biological Sciences. He remained at ANU for the remainder of his career, becoming Head of Plant Cell Biology in 1988, Visiting Fellow at the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant Science in 1992, and Emeritus Professor in 1999.
Professor Letham was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 1985. He was awarded the Research Medal of the New Zealand Association of Scientists Australia (1993); the International Plant Growth Substances Association’s Medal for Excellence in Research (1991); and the Centenary Medal (2001). He gave his time generously to the Academy as a member the Sectional Committee for Plant Sciences 1988–1992.
Alongside the many fascinating history of science articles published in our journal, Historical Records of Australian Science, we publish biographical memoirs – biographies of deceased Fellows commissioned by the Academy. We are very grateful to all the authors who go to great lengths to make these articles as complete as possible.
Recent biographical memoirs:
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