2006 Australian of the Year --- Professor Ian Frazer

Photo by Chris Stacey, Courtesy of the University of QLD‘Being Australian is not a matter of where you were born but whether you feel you are being a useful part of the community here.’

Scottish-born Professor Ian Frazer has come a long way since setting off for 3 months in 1974 to spend his summer vacation working at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne.

Keen to pursue medical research, Ian’s decision to later emigrate here with his wife was largely influenced by Australia’s training opportunities in clinical immunology.

Although he found the hospital working environment very similar to the UK, there were some differences. Coming to grips with the patient referral system, Australian pharmacopoeia and regulations and peculiarly Australian diseases each presented their own challenges. On his first night on-call in emergency, Ian had to treat a patient for redback spider bite—not exactly common in the UK!

Since then, his dedicated research work, and that of his (late) research partner Dr Jian Zhou, has led to the development of the world’s first vaccine for cervical cancer. Cervical cancer kills 270,000 people worldwide every year. Ian has been determined from the very beginning that this vaccine would also reach women in poverty.

Now Director of the Centre for Cancer and Immunology Research at the University of Queensland, Ian’s outstanding work was honoured when he became the 2006 Australian of the Year. This is the 5th time that an overseas trained doctor has been the recipient of this pre-eminent award.