In their footsteps

The Sydney Medical School and Medical Alumni Association are proud of the achievements of their alumni. We include a small selection of the achievements of some of our most celebrated.

Links navigate to the individual profiles at the Online Museum and Archive.

• Professor Margaret Burgess AO
  was a pioneer in research and clinical trials of rubella vaccines in Australia and has made an outstanding contribution paediatrics and child health, particularly in the fields of immunisation, infectious diseases and teratology.
• Dr Victor Chang AC
  was responsible for the establishment of Australia's National Heart Transplant Program at St Vincent's Hosptital, Sydney in 1984 and was its head surgeon.
• Professor Graeme M Clark AC
  pioneered of the multiple-channel cochlear implant, commonly known as the bionic ear, which has brought hearing and speech understanding to tens of thousands of people in more than 100 countries.
• Professor Raymond Dart
  An anatomist and anthropologist, he discovered ‘the Taung child’ in 1924. His discovery of the earliest human in Africa challenged those who had seen Asia as the site of origin of man.
• Professor Cres Eastman AM
  is a world-renowned endocrinologist with a primary interest in Iodine Deficiency Disorders and is an international leader in projects to abolish IDD throughout the developing world.
• Sir Norman McAlister Gregg
  showed that maternal rubella infection in early pregnancy caused birth defects however it was not until 1961, two decades after his initial findings, that scientists were able to isolate the rubella virus.
• Dr Catherine Hamlin AC
  with her late husband Reginald, co-founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia in 1974. This hospital has now treated more than 26,000 girls suffering from fistulas and other birth injuries.
• Sir Michael Marmot
  has been at the forefront of research into health inequalities for the past 30 years. His groundbreaking research demonstrated the connections between psychosocial factors and the social gradients of disease.
• Professor Donald Metcalf AC
  is world-renowned for his pioneering work on the regulation of blood cell formation and the control of leukemic cells.
• Professor Jacques Miller
  has the rare privilege of being the last person to have discovered the function of a major organ of the body - the thymus gland. His work spearheaded a revolution in our understanding of how immunity is generated.
• Sir Gustav Nossal AC
  was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. His clarification of cell capacity in antibody formation (Burnet’s theory) became the foundation of our contemporary understanding of the immune system.
• Sir Grafton Elliot Smith
  An anatomist and anthropologist, he was the first person to use X-ray to examine a mummy and was responsible for the examination of Tutankhamen's preserved body.
• Professor Colin Sullivan AO
  has made significant contributions internationally to the understanding and treatment of sleep apnea and he invented the nasal CPAP technology used to treat this condition.
• Professor Ann Woolcock AO
  founded the world leading Institute of Respiratory Medicine in 1985 (renamed the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in 2002 in her memory) and was the first woman in clinical medicine to be elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1992.