Annie Jean Macnamara

Annie Jean Macnamara was born on 1 April 1899 in Beechworth, Victoria, Australia. She was the second daughter of John Macnamara, a clerk of courts, and Annie Williams, a dressmaker. She attended Spring Road State School and Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne. She entered the University of Melbourne at age 17 and graduated with honours in medicine and surgery in 1922. She became a resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and then at the Royal Children's Hospital in 1923. There, she encountered a polio outbreak and began to research the disease. She tested the use of immune serum to treat patients at the pre-paralytic stage and published her results in Australian and British journals. She also collaborated with Macfarlane Burnet to demonstrate that there was more than one strain of polio virus, a finding that would later facilitate the development of the Salk vaccine. In 1931, she received a Rockefeller Fellowship to study orthopaedics in England and the United States. She returned to Australia in 1934 and married Joseph Ivan Connor, a dermatologist. They had two daughters, Joan and Merran. She continued her orthopaedic work and was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1935 for her services to medicine. In the 1930s, she also encouraged the Australian government to trial the myxoma virus to combat the rabbit plague. The trials were initially unsuccessful, but she persisted until the virus became epizootic in 1951 and killed millions of rabbits. She retired from practice in 1951 but remained active in public health issues until her death. She died on 13 October 1968 from natural causes at South Yarra, Victoria¹.