Scottish professor honoured in Australia

Glasgow-born Professor Ian Frazer will tomorrow become one of eight new Companions of the Order of Australia (AC) – the nation’s highest honour – for his pioneering work into creating the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer.

The 2006 Australian of the Year received his Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Medicine, and Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. He went on to work at Edinburgh Eastern General Hospital, the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the Roodlands General Hospital in Haddington, before emigrating to Australia in 1980.

Prof Frazer, 59, has since been based at the Queensland’s Diamantina Institute, where he has won nearly two-dozen further awards, including the Australian Biotechnology prize in 1999, and the prime minister’s award for science in 2008.

He said: “It’s important people understand that the benefits they get from medical research today are because scientists put in the effort 20 years ago, and at that time the public funded it.”