Portal:Viruses/Selected biography/2

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985) was an Australian virologist, microbiologist and immunologist. His early virological studies were on bacteriophages, including the pioneering observation that bacteriophages could exist as a stable non-infectious form that multiplies with the bacterial host, later termed the lysogenic cycle.

With the outbreak of World War II, Burnet's focus moved to influenza. Although his efforts to develop a live vaccine proved unsuccessful, he developed assays for the isolation, culture and detection of influenza virus, including haemagglutination assays. Modern methods for producing influenza vaccines are still based on his work improving virus-growing processes in hen's eggs. He also researched influenza virus genetics, examining the genetic control of virulence and demonstrating, several years before influenza virus was shown to have a segmented genome, that the virus recombined at high frequency.