ANZSCDB
Past Medal recipients

Emeritus Professor John Kerr AO received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Queensland in 1998 for his national and international contribution to science.

His landmark discovery on apoptosis, or programmed cell death, published in 1972, revolutionised the study of many processes in biology and disease.

Professor Kerr graduated in medicine from the University in 1957. From 1962 to 1964 as a PhD student in London, he first observed the characteristic morphology of a distinctive type of cell death. This was later termed apoptosis when the wide-ranging significance of the process in health and disease was recognised.

He returned to the University in 1965, and was head of the Department of Pathology from 1974 to 1995, during which time he continued his study of apoptosis in a variety of circumstances, among them the death of tumour cells exposed to chemotherapy and immunological attack.

In recent years, molecular biologists have unravelled the processes controlling apoptosis and this is leading to new methods for treating diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis.

World-wide interest in the process has grown very rapidly since 1990.