Sir. Macfarlane Burnet

Macfarlene Burnet was born in Australia in 1899 and died in 1985. His contirubtions to immunology were mainly theoretical. Thus he was the first to recognize the then revolutionary concept that the ability to be immune to disease was not inherited but developed gradually in the embryo. He postulated that during this gradual development tolerance to self antigens would develop and predicited that exposure to self antigens in the embryo would cause tolerance. He went on the propose the clonal selection theory, in the 1950s/ Burnet was also an excellent virologist and was the first to isolate the agent of Q Fever. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1960

Tizard Immunology 4th Ed 139