Burnet and Nossal: the impact on immunology of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

T HE WALTER AND ELIZA HALL Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia is probably the world’s best known research center devoted to the study of immunology. This recognit ion was gained under the leadership of its third director, Sir Frank Macfar lane Burnet, who headed the Institute from 1944 to 1965. Subsequent ly, the Institute has shown explosive growth under the leadership of its present director, Sir Gustav Nossal( l966 to present). The two individuals differ markedly in personal characteristics, but both made major and unique contributions to the definition of immunology as a modern science. Two recent publications have brought the Hall Institute to general attention: the first is Life among the Scientists: An Anthropological Study of an Australian ScientifiG Community (Charlesworth et al., 1989). The second is The See& of Time (1991), a b iography of Sir Macfar lane Burnet by Christopher Sexton. The overall perspect ives of the two books are quite distinct. The first has the stated purpose of attempting “to understand how a small g roup of scientists at a particular research institute, and in a specific scientific field, do science, as distinct from what the received scientific mythology says they do and what phi losophers of science and other science watchers suppose they do” (p. 1). For this study a group of anthropologists used interviews and techniques of anthropological analysis to characterize a group of scientists as if they were a separate subculture working within the context of its own historical, sociological and mythological milieu. Charlesworth et al. write from an avowedly Marxist perspective, and address too many issues facing contemporary science to do justice to any single one or to give a coherent picture of the subject. The volume is interesting because it states many of the issues that have currently been brought to the front in various popular criticisms of science and analyses them within the philosophical context of the authors’ beliefs and within the framework of interviews with scientists working in a single research institute. It should prove useful to historians of the Hall Institute and Australian Science and to ljnure sociological or anthropological studies of the scientific subculture. Sexton’s book is a well-constructed biography of the life of Sir Macfar lane Burnet starting with the immigration of his father, Frank Burnet, to Australia in 1880 and ending with Burnet’s death in 1986. The biography makes extensive use of interviews with Burnet, his writings, and interviews of individuals closely associated with him. I found it to be a fascinating book that provided an overall perspect ive of Burnet’s life and times.