Skip to main content
Menu

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

The Gallery’s Acknowledgement of Country, and information on culturally sensitive and restricted content and the use of historic language in the collection can be found here.

Sir Macfarlane Burnet

1960-1961
Sir William Dargie CBE

oil on composition board (frame: 132.0 cm x 107.4 cm, support: 107.5 cm x 81.7 cm)

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet OM AK KBE (1899–1985), medical scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960 for his work with Sir Peter Medawar on acquired immunological tolerance to tissue transplants. Burnet had earlier worked with Jean Macnamara to prove that there were at least two viruses causing poliomyelitis, and had isolated the Q fever bacterium, Coxiella burnetti. In 1941 he published The Production of Antibodies. Together with Frank Fenner, he produced a substantially revised version of this book in 1949. Broadly, it contained the discoveries for which Burnet was to win the Nobel Prize in 1960. Burnet worked for most of his career at the University of Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, of which he was Assistant Director from 1928 to 1931 and Director from 1944 to 1965. His successor, Sir Gustav Nossal, described Burnet as ‘truly a lateral thinker, but a highly disciplined one’. One of a handful of Australians to have been awarded the Order of Merit – a stringently exclusive honour bestowed personally by the British sovereign – and one of only a dozen Australian men to have been made a Knight of the Order of Australia, Burnet is far and away the most recognised and decorated scientist to have elected to carry out the bulk of his research in this country, despite overtures from around the world.

Sir William Dargie CBE (1912–2003) painted Burnet after he had accepted his Nobel Prize and was named the first-ever Australian of the Year. The portrait shows Burnet investigating influenza virus, which was his major interest between 1940 and 1957. In the 1930s Burnet made what was probably the most noteworthy technical advance in microbiology by an Australian. This was the use of chick embryos (instead of expensive and inconvenient numbers of rabbits or mice) for the isolation and assay of animal viruses. By creating a large artificial airspace between the membrane around the embryo and the eggshell, he could inoculate the egg with measured amounts of viral material and count the ‘pocks’ that grew on the membrane. This is what he is about to do to the egg on the stand in the picture, using material taken from one of the test tubes in the wooden stand. Over sixty years later one of these procedures is still used for producing influenza vaccine.

Purchased 1999
© Roger Dargie and Faye Dargie

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. Works of art from the collection are reproduced as per the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). The use of images of works from the collection may be restricted under the Act. Requests for a reproduction of a work of art can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

Artist and subject

Sir William Dargie CBE (age 48 in 1960)

Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet OM AK KBE (age 61 in 1960)

© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency