Donald Metcalf

Donald Metcalf was an Australian medical researcher who was internationally renowned for his pioneering work on blood cells and their regulation by colony-stimulating factors (CSFs). He spent his 60-year career at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, where he established cancer research as a major field of study. He also collaborated with several molecular biologists to isolate and clone the genes that encode CSFs, which led to the development of drugs that are widely used in cancer therapy. He was awarded numerous prizes and honors for his contributions to science and medicine, including the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1993, the Prime Minister's Prize for Science in 2000, and the Japan Prize in 2013. He was also elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1971, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1984, and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1997. He died of cancer on 15 December 2014 at the age of 85. [1][2][3][4]