14 Facts About Frank Fenner

Frank John Fenner was an Australian scientist with a distinguished career in the field of virology.

Frank Fenner attended Rose Park Primary School and Thebarton Technical School.

Frank Fenner attended the University of Adelaide, where he earned degrees in medicine and surgery in 1938.

In May 1937, Fenner was a member of an Adelaide University anthropological expedition to Nepabunna Mission in the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia led by J B Cleland, which included Charles P Mountford as ethnologist and photographer, as well as botanist Thomas Harvey Johnston and others.

From 1967 to 1973 Frank Fenner was Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research.

Frank Fenner announced the eradication of smallpox to the World Health Assembly on 8 May 1980.

Frank Fenner had an abiding interest in the environment, and was the foundation Director of the Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies at the ANU, where he worked until his retirement in 1979, and which became part of the Frank Fenner School of Environment and Society in 2007.

Frank Fenner was a keen supporter of Australia having an ecologically, socially sustainable population.

Frank Fenner was emeritus professor at the John Curtin School of Medical Research.

Frank Fenner died in Canberra on the morning of 22 November 2010 after a brief illness, and days after the birth of his first great-grandchild.

Victoria Frank Fenner was born on 1 March 1943 and was adopted later at the request of her father after the death in a fire of Victoria's mother.

On 30 March 1958, Victoria Frank Fenner shot and killed herself, as part of a supposed suicide pact with another child, Catherine Webb, who provided the rifle and bullets.

Frank Fenner himself was unable to fathom a motive, other than she was upset from reading Neville Shute's book, On the Beach.

Bobbie Frank Fenner was diagnosed with cancer in 1989 and eventually died in 1994.