Professor Glenda Halliday FAA FAHMS – New South Wales Scientist of the Year
Professor Maria Makrides FAA FAHMS – South Australian Scientist of the Year
Professor Geordie Williamson FAA FRS – Excellence in Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Chemistry or Physics, NSW Premier's Prizes for Science & Engineering
Professor Hala Zreiqat AM FAA FTSE FAHMS – 2022 TAKREEM Laureate in the Scientific and Technological Achievement category
27 May 2024 to 18 November 2022
Professor Derek Denton was elected to the Academy in 1979 for his outstanding contributions to the physiology of body fluid homeostasis, particularly the mechanisms involved in the regulation of body sodium. His experiments provided many new insights on sodium homeostasis, secretory processes and endocrine influences in environmental adaptation.
Professor Denton studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, and three months after his graduation in 1947, his patient observations (while a junior resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital) led to a basic discovery on kidney function and publication of a paper in Nature. Professor Denton worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall of Medical Institute (WEHI), and in 1960, he founded the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine (now known as ‘the Florey’) with the support of philanthropists from around the world and Australia, including Kenneth Myer and Sir Ian Potter. The Florey is now one of the world’s top five brain research centres.
In 1995, on election to the National Academy of Sciences (US), Professor Denton was cited as ‘the world's leading authority on the regulation of salt and water metabolism and relevant endocrine control mechanisms’. Professor Denton was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal College of Physicians (London) and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He was a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Medical Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the American Physiology Society. In 1987 Professor Denton was awarded the Academy’s Macfarlane Burnet Medal, and in 2005 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2006 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Melbourne and published his new book, The Primordial Emotions: The Dawning of Consciousness, outlining important new theories about how the human brain evolved.
Professor Denton generously gave his time to the Academy, serving on many committees.
30 May 1930 to 18 November 2022
Professor Sev Sternhell was born in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) which became a Jewish ghetto under Nazi occupation during his childhood. Following time spent in Bergen-Belsen, Sev was transported to Switzerland in 1944, and after spending a short time in Palestine, his family moved to Australia in 1947.
Professor Sternhell was elected to the Academy in 1992 for his work on the development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. He was the ‘prime mover’ for the introduction of NMR into Australia. In the early 1960s, he was in charge of one of the first NMR spectrometers in Australia (in the Division of Coal Research in CSIRO) and he used it extensively and published many research papers exploring various aspects of NMR and developing new applications in chemistry.
He was the driving force for the establishment of the National NMR Centre in Canberra and his collaboration with other organic chemists confirmed the great value of NMR, and gave his time generously to the Academy.
Professor Sternhell was interviewed by Sophie Caplan in 1980 on his experiences as a Jew during the Second World War in Poland, his time in Bergen-Belsen, and his migration to Australia. The interview is available on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website.
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