Thorburn Brailsford Robertson

Australian physiologist, biochemist, gerontologist, and animal nutritionist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thorburn Brailsford Robertson (4 March 1884 – 18 January 1930), generally known as Brailsford Robertson, was an Australian physiologist, biochemist, gerontologist, and animal nutritionist. Driven by his view, "Do the best you can with what you have where you are",[1][2] he was "widely regarded as having possessed a rare capacity both as a teacher and researcher".[3][4] Robertson's assignment of the rights to his tethelin patent (BR.17, BR.18) to the University of California (UC.6) in September 1917 is universally treated as a landmark precedent event in the subsequent development of what is now known as university technology transfer.[5]

Born(1884-03-04)4 March 1884
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died18 January 1930(1930-01-18) (aged 45)
Warringa Private Hospital,
Glenelg, South Australia
EducationUniversity of Adelaide
University of California
Knownforpatenting "tethelin";
assigning the "tethelin" patent to University of California;
improving the production and clinical use of insulin to treat diabetes mellitus;
animal nutrition
Quick facts Born, Died ...
Thorburn Brailsford Robertson
Brailsford Robertson, at Toronto (1919)
Born(1884-03-04)4 March 1884
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died18 January 1930(1930-01-18) (aged 45)
Warringa Private Hospital,
Glenelg, South Australia
EducationUniversity of Adelaide
University of California
Known forpatenting "tethelin";
assigning the "tethelin" patent to University of California;
improving the production and clinical use of insulin to treat diabetes mellitus;
animal nutrition
SpouseJane Winifred Stirling (m.1910)
Children3
RelativesSir Edward Stirling (father-in-law)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of California
University of Toronto
University of Adelaide
Academic advisors
Jacques Loeb
Doctoral students
Roy Elwood Clausen, Selman Waksman
Close

His initial research interests were in the physical and biochemical processes underlying nervous activity, cognition, human growth, and senescence.[6][7] Following the Canadian discovery of insulin, he became deeply involved in both researching the insulin treatment of diabetes and the Australian production of insulin, conducted under license, and centred on the campus of the University of Adelaide: not only refining and purifying its extraction from bovine pancreases, but also significantly reducing its cost per dose, prior to its full-scale commercial production being transferred to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories on 1 May 1924. Due to his later work as Chief of the Commonwealth Government's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Division of Animal Nutrition, he became one of the foremost authorities in the field of animal nutrition.[8]

"Robertson was a tall, popular man who who, despite his drive and leadership was gentle, tolerant and understanding of colleagues." (DB.2).[9]

Family

The only child of Thorburn Robertson (1851–1932), and Sarah Ann Robertson (1859-?), née Brailsford, Thorburn Brailsford Robertson was born at Edinburgh, Scotland on 4 March 1884. In the early 1890s he migrated to South Australia with his mother to join his father who was attorney for Kangarilla Silver Mines Ltd,[10] and the manager of its copper mine at Callington, near Murray Bridge, South Australia.[11] The Robertsons lived at Callington for a number of years.[12][13]

Marriage

He married Jane Winifred "Jennie" Stirling (1881–1966), the third daughter of his former professor, Sir Edward Stirling, at Mount Lofty, South Australia on 1 July 1910.[14][15] They had three children: Judith Stirling Robertson (1917–2012), later, Mrs. Herbert Charles Vaughan Woollard,[16][17][18] the physicist and amateur radio operator,[19] David Stirling Robertson, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc. (1920–1999),[20][21][22][23] and the medical practitioner, Thorburn Stirling Brailsford Robertson, M.B. B.S. (1925–1966), known as "Stirling".[24][25]

Education

Once the family had moved to Adelaide, he attended the Misses Stanton School, "Blanche Villa", in Glenelg (initially a girls school, later a school for boys to age 12).[12][26] Robertson was educated there and continued to board with Phoebe Stanton until he graduated from university in 1905.[27]

He enrolled in the University of Adelaide in 1902 and studied with Professor (Sir) Edward Stirling and Professor (Sir) William Bragg (Nobel Prize in Physics 1915).[28] He graduated, aged 21, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. with First Class Honours in Physiology) on 17 April 1905,[29][30] having had two articles (BR.1, BR.2) published before he graduated. He gained his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of California, Berkeley, aged 23, in 1907.[31] He graduated Doctor of Science (D.Sc.),[32] in absentia, aged 24, at the University of Adelaide, on 16 December 1908.[33][34][35]

University of California

Upon graduating B.Sc. from Adelaide in 1905, he accepted Jacques Loeb's[36] offer of a (paid) junior position in the Physiology Department of the University of California's School of Medicine;[37][38][39] and, according to Hedley Marston, as well as "enjoy[ing] the intellectual companionship and friendship of Jacques Loeb" at Berkeley, he also enjoyed "the pleasant and inspiring association of his colleagues":[39] who included Winthrop J. V. Osterhout, Hardolph Wasteneys,[40][41] Frederick P. Gay, Wolfgang Ostwald, Carl L. A. Schmidt,[42] and Alonzo E. Taylor.[39]

With his developing interest in physical chemistry, and his Bragg-generated interest in mathematics, he produced two papers in 1908 (BR.5, BR.6), offering "[an] extrapolation of ... [his own] mathematical models for cell growth ... to theories to account for the normal rate of growth of individual organisms".[43] While working with Loeb at Berkeley Robertson became interested in the physical chemistry of proteins;[44] and, in 1912, he published a monograph on the subject (BR.9), in German. It was translated into Russian, by V. M. Arkhangeleski of the University of Moscow, in 1913;[45] and an expanded English version of the original monograph was published five years later, in 1918 (BR.30).

In 1910, when Loeb moved to The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, Robertson was promoted to Associate Professor of Physiological Chemistry within the School of Medicine;[46] and, in 1916, he was appointed as full Professor of Biochemistry in the new, separate, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology that had just been established in the university's School of Medicine.[47] By this time, through his "investigat[ions of the] diverse aspects of mechanisms of growth and longevity in plants, animals and humans", Robertson had already "gained international repute as a leader in the field of biochemistry".[48]

Sabbatical leave (1913/1914)

In 1913/1914 Robertson took 12 months sabbatical leave from the University of California. He spent four months in Adelaide, during which time he delivered two lectures: "Some Factors in the Cell Growth of Tumors [sic]", to the Microscopical Society of South Australia on 22 July 1913,[49] and "Some Economic Aspects of Scientific Research", to the Science Association of the Adelaide University on 6 August 1913.[50]

On 12 November 1913, he submitted a 17-page report, Report on the Scope and Administration of an Institute for Scientific Research in Australia (BR.13),[51] to the South Australian branch of the British Science Guild.[52] The Guild's Report, with Robertson's report appended to it, was immediately given to Patrick "Paddy" McMahon Glynn, the Member for Angas, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, for him to directly hand it on to the Prime Minister, Joseph Cook. According to George Currie and John Graham (GC.1, pp.8–9), there is no evidence that Robertson's (1913) report ever reached the Prime Minister (or any other Minister) at that time.[53]

Robertson then travelled widely throughout Europe. In March 1914 he met up with Ivan Pavlov in Russia, and Pavlov gave him a personal tour of his laboratories at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg.[54]

Doctoral students

His doctoral students at the University of California included Roy Elwood Clausen,[55] Carl L. A. Schmidt,[42] and Selman Waksman (the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of streptomycin).[56]

Tethelin

In March 1916, Robertson published a suite of five interconnected articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, describing the process through which a material, which he called tethelin (from τεθηλώς, 'growing'),[57] he and his assistant, Louis Adolph Ray, had extracted (in 1915) from the anterior lobes of ox pituitaries acquired from a local slaughterhouse (BR.21), and its positive effects on the growth of his experimental mice (BR.22–BR.25). Robertson claimed that the substance was the pituitary's "growth-controlling principle"; and, according to Robertson's account, on-going research demonstrated that tethelin not only stimulated growth, but was very effective in the treatment of ulcers of long standing and slow-healing wounds.[a]

Prior to the (March 1916) publication of his discoveries, Robertson had not only been granted the US patent (BR.17) and the UK patent (BR.18) for the "Tethelin" extraction process, but had also begun to use the trade-mark TETHELIN, the rights to which he was subsequently granted in December 1916 (BR.20). Well aware of Jokichi Takamine's earlier struggle to patent adrenalin, and the challenges and time delays Takamine experienced,[58][59] Robertson simply patented his process, and not his product.[60]

Controversies and precedents

  • Long before the born secret issues associated with the restricted data provisions of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the US Invention Secrecy Act of 1951,[61] and the US Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act of 1980 and/or the increasing concerns with respect to the on-going biopiracy of natural products, and in the early 20th-century atmosphere of cultural change — not only in the proliferation of vocational universities, rather than research universities, but also in the gradual move from the disciplinary concentration on "pure science"[62] and, perhaps, aspects of "applied science", to that of fostering "industrial science"[63] in both primary and secondary industries[64] — the ethical question of whether or not those universities devoted to "pure science" (viz., the discovery/creation, distillation, refinement, diffusion, and the free dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of the public)[65][66] should have any interest in "applied science", and further, whether they should have any commercial interest in the products of their research and, in particular, whether they should seek patents for their discoveries.[67][68][69]
  • In addition to the question of whether it was ethical to patent medical inventions (pharmaceuticals, devices, apparatus, procedures, etc.), or not[70][71][72] — in particular, whether "products of scientific research that affect public and individual health, particularly discoveries and inventions of a medical, pharmaceutical, therapeutic, or hygienic nature ... both patentable and otherwise, should be shared 'without fee or stipulation'", or, given the "[difference] between patenting for personal gain and patenting in the public interest" whether "a new process or discovery [should be patented] in the public interest"[73] — the medical profession had a further concern. The term, "patented medicine" strongly suggested the unscientific, testimonial-promoted, "cure all" preparation of the charlatan, quack, or snake oil salesman, universally known as a patent medicine.[74][75]
  • In 1907, Frederick Cottrell, a colleague of Robertson's at the University of California,[76] patented his electrostatic precipitator, designed to produce cleaner industrial chimney emissions (FC.1), and offered the rights to the University. From their view that the university's Charter precluded any commercial activity, the Regents of the University of California declined Cottrell's offer. In response, Cottrell went on to establish an independent nonprofit organization on 26 February 1912 — the Research Corporation for Science Advancement — not only to manage his own patents, but to "contract with various universities, industry workers, and unattached inventors in order to manage their patents",[77] with the profits used to fund research, regardless of the applicant's university.[78]
  • For Robertson, the need for appropriate buildings, laboratories, supplies, and equipment to be funded for research was always at least as important as the funding of any individual researcher.[80][81][82]
  • In 1917, in a precedent-setting action, Robertson proposed assigning his patent rights to the University of California (EN.1; SC.1) (i.e., rather than Cottrell's non-specific Research Corporation) specifically to support medical research at the University of California. With the Regents of the University of California still holding their (earlier) view that their university's Charter precluded any commercial activity, the Regents and Robertson eventually came to the extraordinary (at the time) arrangement (UC.5)[83][84][85] of creating an external-to-the-university entity to manage the patent and "apply any unexpended balance of such proceeds, profits or returns to research work in Medicine and preferably in the Physiology, Chemistry and Pathology of Growth[86] either under the auspices of the University of California or otherwise ... [or] such research work be conducted in part in Australia, either under the auspices of some institution of learning there or otherwise".[87]
  • Robertson and five others from the University of California formed the entity's first Board of Directors: Herbert McLean Evans (Professor of Anatomy), Frederick Parker Gay (Professor of Pathology), T. Brailsford Robertson (Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology), Carl Louis August Schmidt (Research Assistant in Pathology),[88] and George Hoyt Whipple (Director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research and Professor of Research Medicine);[89] and, once the Board of Directors had been appointed, the university granted a five year exclusive license in September 1917 to the H. K. Mulford Company "to manufacture and sell the compound known as Tethelin at its factory in the City of Philadelphia, State of Pennsylvania".[90]

Despite the ethical, academic, commercial, and therapeutic controversies surrounding tethelin itself, Robertson's (1917) assignment of his tethelin patent to the University of California is universally treated as a landmark precedent event in the development of university technology transfer.[5][91] In the ensuing years, the emergence of the concept of "intellectual property", driven by the theories and influence of Henri Bergson (the (August 1922) inaugural chairman of the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation), made the already complex "paper vs. patent" issue[92] even more fiercely contested, due to the significantly increased number of patents and the number of universities involved, and the extent to which a university's ever-increasing move towards commercialization not only reduced that institution's focus on the production of knowledge, but also privatised the knowledge that its researchers produced (PS.1):[93][94]

  • In his (August 1962) Report to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (AP.2), Archie Palmer reported that, of the 945 US "higher education institutions" he had surveyed,[95] 349 had either "formulated and adopted a formalized research and patent policy", or were observing "a generally accepted practice with respect to the handling of research and patent matters",[96][97] whilst the remaining 596 (which, he observed, conducted "little or no scientific or technological research") had "no formalized research or patent policies".[96][98]
  • In 1965, 96 US patents were granted to 28 "US universities or related institutions"; in 1992, 1500 US patents were granted to more than 150 "US universities or related institutions" (RH.2, p. 119).
  • In 2025, the (formerly reluctant) University of California had been granted 571 patents, making the university's total "over 6,800 active patents" (JB.1).
  • According to the economists Stanley Engerman and Gavin Wright (a) until 1933 there were more US patents issued to individuals than corporations, and (b) by 1950 the ratio was 50:50, however (c) by 1998, whilst the number of US patents issued to individual inventors remained more or less the same, (i.e., 10,000–15,000 per annum), they only represented approx. 10% of the number of patents issued (SE.1).

[b][c][d]

University of Toronto

Despite its initial reservations centred upon Robertson's apparent "commercial leanings" (and, specifically, his decision to patent "Tethelin"), and following "an unusually careful review process",[99] the University of Toronto appointed Robertson as Professor in the Department of Biochemistry in 1918.[100][101] He moved to Toronto, accompanied by Hardolph Wasteneys, who later became the head of the Toronto Department from 1929 to 1951.[102] Robertson resigned in 1919, in order to take up his position at the University of Adelaide, and was succeeded, at Toronto, by Professor Andrew Hunter, C.B.E., F.R.S.C., F.R.S.E. (1876–1969).[103]

University of Adelaide

University of Adelaide Council and Staff (1923); Robertson is third from left, front row.

Robertson had been rejected as a candidate for the chair in physiology at Johns Hopkins University because his reputation had been "tarnished" not only by his decision to patent tethelin,[104] but also by his association with its potential commercial exploitation.[105] Robertson also learned that his long post-graduate association with American universities — rather than the (preferred at the time) post-graduate work in United Kingdom[106] — had caused his application to join the newly founded Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine, as its first Director, to be rejected[106] in favour of the successful candidate, Sydney W. Patterson M.B. B.S., M.D., D.Sc.[107]

With a desire to return to Australia[108] — and hoping to apply his acquired academic, administrative, and research skills, talents, and expertise to Australian circumstances[106] — he accepted (in June 1919) the University of Adelaide's (April 1919) offer of a Chair,[109][110] vacant since the (20 March 1919) death of Robertson's father-in-law, Sir Edward Stirling, who had been the university's Professor of Physiology;[12] and, where, in the interim, Charles Kellaway, M.B. B.S., M.D., M.S. of Melbourne, had served as locum.[111] Taking up his duties in 1920, Robertson was immediately identifying himself as "Professor of Physiology and Biochemistry";[112] thus, in Robertson, the University of Adelaide had the first-ever Australian Chair in Biochemistry — almost two decades before the 1938 appointments of William John Young at the University of Melbourne and Henry Priestley at the University of Sydney.[113]

The Medical Sciences Club of South Australia

The Medical Sciences Club of South Australia, one of the oldest scientific clubs in Australia, was founded in Adelaide in 1920 as a means through which researchers in the sciences considered fundamental to medicine and medical practitioners interested in those aspects of medicine could regularly come together for their mutual benefit and for the advancement of biological and medical science.[114]

The club's inaugural meeting was held at the University of Adelaide on 16 April 1920. The fourteen medical men and scientists who attended the meeting were: Mr. Lionel Bull; Dr. Trent Champion de Crespigny; Dr. Raphael Cilento; Professor John Burton Cleland; Dr. Henry Fry; Dr. Frank Hone; Professor F. Wood Jones; Dr. Henry S. Newland; Dr. Robert Pulleine; Dr. William Ray; Professor Edward Rennie; Professor T. Brailsford Robertson; Dr. Malcolm Leslie Scott, M.B. B.S., M.R.C.S., F.R.C.S., M.Ch. (1882–1931);[115] and Dr Harry Swift.[114] The meeting appointed Dr Harry Swift as the club's temporary chairman, and Brailsford Robertson as its temporary secretary.[114]

Aside from its regular monthly meetings, the club was responsible for the on-going, quarterly publication of The Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medical Science from its first issue (March 1924) until its last (December 1986),[e] after which it was re-named Immunology & Cell Biology.

The Chemical Basis of Growth and Senescence (1923)

In between 1916 and 1920 Robertson published a series of 16 papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry under the title Experimental Studies on Growth.[116] The papers became the foundation of his (1923) textbook, The Chemical Basis of Growth and Senescence (BR.36): a work that examined the "self-accelerated" natural processes of growth and aging in plants, animals, and humans (as they were understood at that time).[117]

Using mathematical principles,[118][119] Robertson employed an S-Curve (a.k.a. 'sigmoid curve') (p.5)[120] to demonstrate both the "autokinetic phase" of a "self-accelerated" growth process (i.e., that, "during which the rate of growth is continuously increasing" (p.4)), and its "autostatic phase" (i.e., that, "during which the rate of growth is decreasing" (p.4)).[121] Drawing an analogy to the autocatalyzed chemical reactions of Wilhelm Ostwald[122] (father of his Berkeley colleague Wolfgang Ostwald), Robertson referred to these "self-accelerated" processes as being "autocatalyzed" (p.6).[123] As Lee and Hanson observed (in 1947),[124] "[Robertson's] theory of autocatalytic control over growth ... has been variously rejected, acknowledged and accepted by investigators" (RL.1, p.53).

Insulin

"In 1920 the diagnosis of diabetes, particularly in the young and the very young, was essentially a death sentence."[125]
"The discovery of insulin represents a real breakthrough that has revolutionized both the therapy and the prognosis of people with diabetes ... Before insulin, diabetes was a dreadful condition associated with bad prognosis and miserable quality of life ... [progressing to] the ineluctable coma-death sequence.[126]
Problems of extraction.  

The difficulties encountered in the preparation of suitable pancreatic extracts ... may be classed under four headings:
  (1) the destruction of the active principle by oral administration;
  (2) the toxicity of the first types of extracts when given intravenously;
  (3) the interference of the enzymes contained in the acini when extracts were made of the whole gland; and
  (4) the influence of the medium used for extraction."
      Medical Woman's Journal, June 1924.[127]

In 1890, Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski had shown that, in every case, the complete removal of an experimental dog's pancreas produced severe and fatal diabetes.[128] In the ensuing years "many investigators [had] endeavoured to obtain some beneficial effect in diabetes mellitus,[129] either by feeding pancreas, or by administration of pancreatic extracts".[130]

Toronto

In April 1921, at the Physiology Department of the University of Toronto, Frederick Banting and Charles Best began investigating processes through which "the active principle of the extracts of degenerated [bovine] pancreas" could potentially be preserved without being destroyed (as was the case with the (then) current extraction processes).[131]

Following the ("scientific", rather than "industrial")[132] discoveries and experimental advances from Banting and Best's experiments with "diabetic dogs", the combined efforts of the Department's head, John Macleod (a former assistant to Robertson), its pharmacology lecturer, Banting (assisted by Macleod's student, Best), and the biochemist, James Collip,[133] culminated in the successful (23 January 1922) first-ever life-saving treatment of diabetes mellitus (now known as Type 1 diabetes) when the insulin (from Islets of Langerhans, insulæ pancreaticæ) they had isolated, extracted, and refined from cattle pancreases — i.e., refined to the extent that they believed a human could tolerate[134] — was injected into the almost moribund 13-year-old Leonard Thompson in the Toronto General Hospital.[135] Thompson lived for another 13 years; he died, aged 27, of bronchopneumonia.[136]

By 22 February 1922, the team was reporting that "the effects observed in depancreatized animals have been paralleled in man",[137] that the condition of seven patients had been "favourably influenced" by the daily administration of the extract by injection,[138][139] and that "the patients themselves report[ed] a subjective subjective sense of well being and increased vigor for a period following the [extract's] administration".[140] Fully aware that insulin was "an extraordinarily effective but dangerous drug",[141] Banting, Best, and Collip patented insulin in 1923,[142][143][144] "despite prevailing hostility in the medical profession as regards drug patents", in order to have some control over its purity, quality, potency, manufacture, and sale.[141]

Banting and Macleod were jointly awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of insulin"; and, within a month of the award ceremony, Banting had given Best one-half of his share in the prize,[145] and Macleod had given Collip one-half of his share.[146]

Adelaide

Thomas Alan Burrage, B.V.Sc., Chief Inspector, Adelaide Abattoirs (1924).[147]

The first treatments with Adelaide-produced insulin were delivered by Robertson's Medical Science Club colleague, Dr. Trent Champion de Crespigny.[148] The first treated was gravely-ill 9 years-old Dawson Hanna (1913–1926), at the Adelaide Children's Hospital on 7 January 1923,[149][150] who lived for another three years.[151] The first adult treated with Adelaide-produced insulin was the comatose and moribund 34 years-old Clifford Harry Cornish (1888–1954), at the Adelaide Hospital on 31 January 1923,[149][152] who lived for another thirty years.[153] All of the Adelaide-produced insulin used for these treatments was delivered "free of charge" to the patients.[154][155]

Commonwealth Serum Laboratories

Robertson and his research team at the University of Adelaide had significantly improved the extraction, purity, and speed of manufacture of insulin and had, in the process, produced more than 40,000 doses of insulin.[156] On 1 May 1924, the future research and manufacture of insulin was entirely transferred over to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, then a division of the Commonwealth Department of Health, and located in Royal Park, Melbourne.[157]

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

Immediately following Prime Minister Billy Hughes' 22 December 1915 "National Laboratory Conference" announcement at a Melbourne University luncheon,[158] the British Science Guild sent the Prime Minister a copy of its (hitherto ignored) 1914 Report,[52][53] with Robertson's (1913) Report on the Scope and Administration of an Institute for Scientific Research in Australia (BR.13) appended to it.[51] The formal gathering was convened in Melbourne on 5 January 1916;[159] and a Commonwealth Advisory Council of Science and Industry was established,[160][161][162] "with over twenty members representing a cross-section of scientific, state, and business interests".[163][164] On 14 September 1920, an Institute of Science and Industry, with Sir George Knibbs as its Director, was established by the Institute of Science and Industry Act 1920 (CA.1).[165]

On 21 June 1926, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was created by the Science and Industry Research Act 1926 (CA.2). The Council consisted of eleven members: three Commonwealth nominees, who formed the Executive Committee (and one of whom would be appointed chairman), and, in addition to the six State chairmen, another two co-opted members.[166][167] They were, collectively, a very representative group: two engineers, two chemists, two biologists, one representative of agricultural science, one geologist, one representative of veterinary science, one representative of manufacturing industries, and one representative of the agricultural and pastoral industries.[166] Robertson attended the Council's first official meeting, in Melbourne, on 22 June 1926,[168] as the acting chairman of the South Australian Committee.[169][170][171]

The Brailsford Robertson Building, University of Adelaide.

Division of Animal Nutrition

In March 1927, due to the concerted efforts of Professor David Rivett,[172] and following an agreement with the University of Adelaide that Robertson could continue his relationship with the university,[173] Robertson became the head of the Council's first division, the Division of Animal Nutrition.[174][175]

A red brick two-storey building, funded by the Commonwealth Government,[176] and dedicated to animal nutrition research,[176] was designed by the university's architect, Louis Laybourne-Smith,[177] and contained a special laboratory designed by Robertson.[177] It was erected by the CSIR on the university's campus "upon land very generously made available for this purpose by the University" (BR.53).[178] The CSIR Building, known today as The Brailsford Robertson Building,[176] was opened by the Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, on 22 October 1928.[179]

Publications

Robertson published widely over a range of scientific subjects,[180] including his life-long interest in the biochemical processes underlying higher nervous functions and cognition.[181] In 1932, the Australian biochemist, Mary Campbell Dawbarn, compiled an exhaustive list of Robertson's publications for The Robertson Memorial Volume. She cited 7 books, 174 articles, and 26 other items, published between 1904 and 1929 of which Robertson was joint author.[182] His publications included an early (1914) work, especially written for children; and, later, three significant textbooks, one of which had two editions:

Affiliations and appointments

Robertson was highly regarded in his lifetime for his contributions to science. He belonged to a wide range of prestigious scientific organizations:

Death

He collapsed at his university laboratory bench, having insisted on continuing to work during a heat wave,[189][190] despite having an influenza-caused high temperature,[191] and died of pneumonia, several days later, at Warringa Private Hospital, in Glenelg, South Australia on 18 January 1930.[192][193][194] He was cremated on 20 January 1930, at West Terrace Cemetery,[195] and his ashes were scattered in Waterfall Gully, South Australia.[196][197]

Tributes

"Referring to the death of Professor Brailsford Robertson yesterday, the Prime Minister (Mr. Scullin) said:— His untimely end has robbed Australia of a brilliant scientist, whose contribution to the Commonwealth's progress would always be remembered. On behalf of the Federal Ministry Mr. Scullin extended his sincere sympathy to Professor Robertson's family, and expressed its appreciation of the great national services which he had rendered."
    The Argus, 20 January 1930.[198][199]
"Professor Brailsford Robertson was one of Australia's most brilliant scientists. The value of the work he was accomplishing cannot be estimated."
    Hon. R.L. Butler, Premier of South Australia, 20 January 1930.[200][201]
"The main purpose of [Robertson's] studies was to solve the mystery of physical life in it successive stages of commencement, growth, decline, and cessation, for the benefit of his fellow-men. ... The amount of original work he accomplished in his short life was prodigious. I would be rash to assert that the loss to science, or as I should prefer to say, the loss to humanity, caused by his death is irreparable, but it will probably be a long time before anyone else is able to gather the threads together and produce the fabric he was attempting to weave on his loom."
    Sir George Murray, Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, 18 March 1932.[202]
"Aged only 45. it seemed that Robertson had many years of brilliant work ahead of him. His vast investigations into fundamental principles of bio-chemistry, especially the physical chemistry of the proteins and the chemical basis of growth and senescence had equipped him in a unique manner for the attack which he was making upon the immense problems of animal nutrition in Australia. For the time being he was concentrating upon the sheep, working along fundamental lines in his laboratory and applying and testing the results on a large scale at field stations ... He was about to extend this work very considerably during the present year, and one knows that he had completely won the confidence of the graziers in the States in which he was working and was assured of the unstinted support in his plans. ... No one can estimate the seriousness of the check which his sudden passing has given to scientific work in connection with the pastoral industry of Australia, and, indeed, to science generally."
    A.C. David Rivett, Chief Executive Officer of CSIR, 20 January 1930.[203]
"His premature death, at the comparatively early age of forty-five years, removes one of the most active and valuable workers from biochemical research, and is a very serious loss to the recently instituted movement for the more rapid application of biological knowledge to the development of animal husbandry in Australia."
    James B. Overton, Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Wisconsin, Nature.[204]
"Biological science has lost, in Robertson, one of its most brilliant and energetic exponents. ... He was one of those vigorous, fearless thinkers who seem to be entirely free from the inhibitions which restrain most of us in narrow paths of scientific enquiry. ... His magnificent courage and imagination led him into every aspect of biology which presented problems to his consciousness. ... His originality of mind made him a stimulating colleague, and to his students he was as gracious as he was inspiring. ... Robertson's main service to science was in the realm of ideas. His practical work was of lesser significance, but in almost every direction in which his imagination led him he either contributed new conceptions or reoriented prevailing ideas."
    Hardolph Wasteneys, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, The Biochemical Journal.[205]
  • A memorial collection of 12 Robertson items — comprised of ten of his previously published articles[206] and the text of two of his speeches[207] — with an introduction (SP.3) by his University of Adelaide colleague, Stuart Wortley Pennycuick (1887–1966) D.Sc., B.Sc.,[208] and edited by his wife (Jane Winifred Robertson), The Spirit of Research (BR.54), was published in 1931.[209]
  • On 5 September 1931, in the university's Animal Nutrition Building, Sir George Murray, the Chancellor of the University of Adelaide unveiled a bas-relief commemorative plaque (UA.3), designed and executed by Arthur Murch,[210] that was dedicated to Robertson's memory.[211]
Mitchell Building, University of Adelaide.
Quick facts
Photographs
image icon Robertson, aged 18, Glenelg, 1902. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Robertson and his mother, Berkeley, California, 1907. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Robertson, laboratory of the Physiology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, 1912. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Robertson and his wife, laboratory of the Physiology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, 1912. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Robertson's father, London, 1914. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Robertson with his infant daughter, Berkeley, California, 1917. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
image icon Thorburn Brailsford Robertson Memorial Window, Mitchell Building, University of Adelaide.
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See also

Notes

  1. [a]
    "Tests of this new chemical substance made in army hospitals in Europe and in civil hospitals in America have shown that it is of value in curing wounds and in causing wounds to heal promptly which for months or even years had refused to yield to treatment. While several new substances and new methods found by medical investigators since the war began have proved extremely useful in combating infections in wounds, 'Tethelin' has a field of usefulness all its own — after other methods have rendered the tissues aseptic and wounds sometimes refuse to heal, especially where frostbite, burns, or varicose veins have injured the vitality of the tissues. There are thousands of such cases in Europe to-day and they occupy the hospitals for an exceptionally long time, consuming drugs, time, space, and food, and frequently such cases have to be discharged unhealed. It is precisely these cases — the most expensive and most disabling type of wounds — which 'Tethelin' aids, since it stimulates the sluggish tissues and enables nature to work its own repair." Science, 12 October 1917 (SC.1, p. 353: apparently taken verbatim from a press release).
  2. [b]
    "Attempts to demonstrate the existence of a physiologically active substance in anterior lobe material have until recently given negative or at least unconvincing results. Robertson described an extract, tethelin, as an active principle which has a marked influence upon growth. The work has, however, failed of satisfactory confirmation. It is now [viz., 1924] regarded as a variable mixture of lipoids." (RH.1, p. 262).
  3. [c]
    "In 1916, T. Brailsford Robertson announced the isolation from the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland of cattle of a product or principal which affected favorably the growth of animals. Robertson named this product Tethelin. He patented his discovery and assigned the patent to the University of California. The university in turn, licensed the H. K. Mulford Co. to manufacture and market the preparation. In consideration of the claim that Tethelin might be used to accelerate growth and that it stimulated wound repair, the product attracted much attention. Because of the inquiries which the Council had received, the Council took up the consideration when the product was placed on the market for the use of physicians. ... Since the adoption in 1918 of its report holding the evidence for the therapeutic value of Tethelin insufficient to permit its admission to New and Nonofficial Remedies, the Council has received or learned of no reports which tended to establish its value. On the other hand, feeding experiments carried out at the institute of Physiology in University College, London ... [viz., DC.1] ... failed to demonstrate that the oral administration of the anterior lobe substance had any effect on the growth of test animals. In consideration of the lack of evidence for the therapeutic usefulness of Tethelin, the Council concluded the consideration of the product and declared it inadmissible to New and Nonofficial Remedies. ... When this report was sent to the Mulford Co. for consideration, prior to its publication, the firm replied that the product would not be marketed after the present stock is exhausted." — Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association for 1922 (CP.1)
  4. [d]
    "According to Dr. Thomas Jukes, while at California Robertson patented "Tethelin", a dried preparation of pituitary glands, fed to promote growth. However, the effect of tethelin was nutritional rather than hormonal, and the same effect could be produced by dried muscle. In short, [Robertson] was measuring the effect of essential amino acids, which had not yet been discovered." (MP.1, p. 10)
  5. [e]
    "A uniquely Australian publication, the Journal had a reasonably large world-wide circulation and published papers reporting results of original research or concepts in the fields of Biochemistry, Biology, Genetics, Immunology, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Physiology, and Virology. It did much to advance Australian biological research." (UA.2)
  6. [f]
    The memorial window features the figure of Science, holding the Torch of Knowledge in one hand, and an open copy of one of Robertson's favourite books (MG.1) in the other. "In Lumine", from "In lumine tuo videbimus lumen" ('in Thy light shall we see light': Psalm 36:9), was the motto on Robertson's bookplate. "The Laws of Nature are the Thoughts of God", one of Roberston's favourite quotations, attributed to Ørsted, is derived from Ørsted's account of an interchange between the fictional Alfred and Sophia in HO.2 (p. 20). His wife's dedication, at the foot of the window, "To Thorburn Brailsford Robertson in Token of Love" is followed by an extract from a Robertson letter written when he was a student at the University of California: "Then I turn to the one thing which will conquer and transform the world. I turn again to grope in the void for new knowledge. I try to lift a torch in the surrounding blackness which will one day lead to the land of eternal sunshine" (see AA.7).

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