Elizabeth Blackburn Nobel Prize winner 2009

Source: The Australian News

EXPATRIATE biologist Elizabeth Blackburn has won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Hobart-born Elizabeth Blackburn has won the Nobel for physiology or medicine.

Professor Blackburn shares the Nobel with her former graduate student, Carol Greider, from Johns Hopkins University’s school of medicine, and Harvard’s Jack Szostak.

Her discovery of telomeres, caps on the ends of chromosomes which protect genetic information, has opened up new lines of inquiry into growth, ageing and disease. Her work with psychologists on telomeres, stress and meditation seems to prove a mind-body connection.

Dr Blackburn, 60, a Hobart-born graduate of Melbourne University who has worked in the US for many years, was one of the favourites for the Nobel for physiology or medicine.

Australia’s last two laureates, gastroenterologist Barry Marshall and pathologist Robin Warren, continued their tradition of sharing a beer in Perth around the time of the announcement.

Professor Marshall, from the University of Western Australia, famously swallowed a bacterium in solution to prove that most stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria, not stress or spicy food.

He and Dr Warren shared the Nobel for physiology or medicine in 2005. They began their beer ritual as a rueful comment on the long-standing unwillingness of the scientific community to embrace their theory.

Dr Blackburn has graced lists of Nobel favourites before, only to be passed over. She has won awards, such as the Lasker prize for medical research, which are seen as marking out a future Nobel laureate.

Last year she received the L’Oreal-UNESCO award for women in science.

Dr Blackburn, regarded as a mentor to women who juggle careers in science and the demands of family, told The Australian that the prospects for women in the life sciences were much improved since her time – “but only up until the end of the PhD, graduate training and postdoctoral research period.

“Then the number of women in science careers drops off, indicating that the career options for women are not as well matched for women as they are for men.”

She is Morris Herztein Professor of Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her lab is seen as female-friendly, partly because of her role as a mentor but also because of its inter-disciplinary approach, which embraces fields well beyond basic biology.

In a 2007 interview with The New York Times Dr Blackburn said telomeres were “like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.

“In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: did that matter? Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.

“In my lab, were finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres.”

Dr Blackburn was famously appointed, then removed, from president George W. Bush’s bioethics advisory council because she objected to ideology rather than science guiding its work, especially on embryonic stem cells.

Australians have now won 11 Nobels, all but one for science and medicine, the exception being Patrick White’s gong for literature.

Since 1901, there have been 754 male laureates and only 37 female, 23 of those straddling the literature and peace prizes. The club of female science laureates is a very exclusive one.

List of Australian Nobel prize winners

William Bragg – Physics (1915)
Lawrence Bragg – Physics (1915)
Howard Florey – Physiology or medicine (1945)
Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet – Physiology or medicine (1960)
Sir John Carew Eccles – Physiology or medicine (1963)
Patrick White – Literature (1973)
Sir John Warcup Cornforth – Chemistry (1975)
Professor Peter Doherty – Physiology or medicine (1996)
Professor Barry Marshall – Physiology or medicine (2005)
Dr Robin Warren – Physiology or medicine (2005)
Professor Elizabeth Blackburn – Physiology or medicine (2009)

Visit the Nobel Site:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009

“for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”

Photo: Gerbil, Licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0	Photo: Gerbil, Licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0	Photo © Harvard Medical School
Elizabeth H. Blackburn	Carol W. Greider	Jack W. Szostak
1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize
USA	USA	USA
University of California San Francisco, CA, USA	Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Baltimore, MD, USA	Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute
b. 1948 (in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia)	b. 1961	b. 1952 (in London, United Kingdom)

Titles, data and places given above refer to the time of the award.

British landscapes at the Library courtesy Alfred Winter 1874

Alfred Winter was a Melbourne photographer who moved to Hobart Tasmania in 1869 and maintained a successful practice in studio portraiture and landscapes. On Sundays and holidays he travelled to beauty spots around Hobart with his apprentice Frank Miller, that is, until Miller came under suspicion of thieving from his master, and although arrested, the charge was dismissed for lack of evidence (The Mercury 19 October 1877).

Landscapes were Winter’s speciality. He gained a commission with the Hobart Municipal Council’s Land and Works Office in the mid-1870s, but he may have had a yearning to paint. In August 1874 he took the trouble to place on views his three oil paintings by British landscape artists in the reading room of the Public Library, housed upstairs in the Hobart Town Hall.

The first painting (below) by British landscape artist William Shayer was possibly the view mentioned in The Mercury article, 17 August 1874. The second painting is an example only of the other artist’s work, Henry G. Duguid.

WILLIAM SHAYER

Courtesy The Athenaeum
Cattle By A Stream
William Shayer Snr – No dates listed
Private collection
Painting – oil on canvas
Height: 60 cm (23.62 in.), Width: 51 cm (20.08 in.)

William Shayer Biography

The name of William Shayer has been linked with Morland, Ibbeston and Wheatley, all great English landscape painters of the 18th century. In his own right, Shayer is one of our first-class rural artists, with a delightful style and composition entirely his own, and completely free from imitation. He is at his best depicting the rural life of Hampshire and the New Forest; the countrymen and women going about their daily tasks, or resting in the shade of leafy boughs, faces shaded by big rustic hats; stopping at the inn on their return from market, or urging on teams of horses hauling timber.

His pictures express the great love and sympathy he had for the countryside and its people, and his wonderful sense of draughtsmanship and the perfect balance of his palette enabled him to reproduce the very spirit of what he observed – the translucence of reflected light, the sandy bank and filtered sunlight of the forest lanes.

Although he did not exhibit until well into his thirties, his work achieved considerable success and much praise from the art critics of his day. He did exhibit over two hundred paintings in his lifetime, and showed at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Society of British Artists and Suffolk Street. He sometimes painted with E C Williams, the one painting the landscape and the other painting the figures.

His paintings have always been highly sought after and today his work is valued for its accurate representation of rural life in the first three-quarters of the 19th century.

His works can be found in many galleries, museums and private collections throughout the world, including The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Montreal; Glasgow and Leicester

Selected Exhibitions 1825 – 1870
Shayer showed over 330 works at the Royal Society of British Artists and 80 at the British Institution.
He exhibited also at the Royal Academy and at the British Institution of London. His works have been displayed in museums in Glasgow, Leicester, London, Montreal, and Sunderland.

HENRY DUGUID

Courtesy Artnet
Henry G. Duguid
Linlithgow Palace and Chapel, from the south, looking toward the River Forth and Ochil Hill
Oil on Canvas
20 x 30.1 in. / 50.8 x 76.5 cm.
Signed, Inscribed
Sale Of Christie’s East: Wednesday, February 26, 1997
[Lot 291]
Old Master and 19th Century European Paintings

THE MERCURY, 17 AUGUST 1874

Alfred Winter’s exhibition of British landscape artists,
William Shayer and Henry Duguid at the Public Library.
The Mercury 17 August 1874.

TRANSCRIPT

PICTURES IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. - There are now on view in the reading room of the Public Library, three oil paintings, the property of Mr Alfred Winter, photographer, of Elizabeth-street, who has placed them there for the inspection of the public. The gem of the three is “Cattle drinking at the Stream” by W. Shayer. The others are larger, and as landscapes they unquestionably occupy a high place. They are both by the same artist. H. G. Duguid, the one being “Nidpath Castle, Peebles in the distance on the Tweed” and the other “Landing Place, Stirling, Anchel Hills and Cambuskenneth Abbey.” All the paintings have attracted much attention, and connoisseurs agree, we believe, as to their being very excellent works of art.

ALFRED WINTER PANORAMA

Courtesy State Library of Tasmania
Title: Photograph – Panorama of Hobart, in four conjoined parts, taken from the Glebe.
Alfred Winter photographer
Description: 1 photographic print
Format: Photograph
ADRI: NS2960-1-2
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Panoramas of Hobart, 1856 – 1905 (NS2960)
Notes: Four panoramas of Hobart that were in the custody of the Hobart Bellringers and stored in the Bell Tower of the former Holy Trinity Anglican Church in North Hobart. It is believed that the photographs were acquired by the Bellringers around the time each of the photographs were taken. 1870