I believe that the three words: nature, by which I mean the combination of genes that each of us inherit from our parents; nurture, by which I mean the way that our physical and our social environment, especially during childhood, influence our physical, mental and emotional characteristics; and chance, in its dictionary definition, the ‘way things fall out, fortune’, cover every other happening that influences our careers as human beings. Within these definitions, I would now like to compare my father's life and mine.

It is difficult to compare the genetic component. Neither my father nor I had any worrisome disease with a genetic basis, although possibly his addiction to smoking had some such components (I never smoked, so I don't know if I carry those hypothetical genes). In terms of the capacity to work hard and carry out scientific research effectively, we resembled each other more than either of us resembled our male siblings. I believe that my liking for writing books about science and science history, rather than exclusively in journals and review articles, which is the practice of most experimental biologists, must have been inherited, for Father was a very able science writer. The examples of two of my mentors, Burnet and Dubos, both of whom wrote many books as well as hundreds of papers on experimental biology, may also have had an influence.

In relation to ‘nurture’, father was born into a poor family and had to work as an ‘apprentice printer’ (before the days of formal apprenticeships) from the age of 11, although all the evidence that I can obtain is that the large Fenner family had very supportive parents. On the other hand, I was born as the second child of a middle-class family and had the best opportunities available in the country, at that time, in my school and university education. Father had to make his own way from printer's devil through pupil teacher to Teachers' College and university, whereas my childhood and adolescence were arranged by my family as I wanted them. There could hardly have been a greater difference.

The principal element in both our careers, given our innate abilities as shaped by nature and nurture, was chance. I presume that his marriage to Emma Louise Hirt contained an element of chance, in that they both happened to be boarders at the Melbourne Teachers' College at the same time, and she was a most supportive wife as well as a loving mother. Otherwise, it is difficult for me to evaluate that element in my father's career, except to express the view that the great disappointment of his life, I think, was the failure of the University of Sydney to select him to fill the place of Griffith Taylor as Associate Professor of Geography in 1929. Here, chance undoubtedly played a role, for if the opportunity had come after his trip to England in 1931 as one of the Australian representatives at the Centenary Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, I feel certain that he would have been selected, for he made a very good impression on the British geographical fraternity on that trip (see Chapter 17).

Although I have more empathy with his work as a scientist than with that as a bureaucrat, some comments on the latter are relevant here. At the time of his ‘importation’ from Victoria in 1916, he was regarded as an outsider by many South Australians, and he was finally appointed to the influential position of Director of Education just as World War II began, and resigned because of illness just after it finished, so that his visions for the future could not be realized. It is useful here to recall two tributes to his work in the Education Department, the entry in Hansard in 1947 by the Hon. S. W. Jeffries, long-time Minister for Education, and the comment by the Director-General of Education, J. S. Walker, in 1967 (see Chapter 14).

Chance elements in my own life were undoubtedly influenced by my father's standing and friendship with colleagues in the Royal Society of South Australia. Thus, I was given the opportunity to take part in an expedition organized by the Board of Anthropological Research when I was a second-year medical student; this led directly to my work on Aboriginal skulls which constituted the basis of my MD degree. When I began writing this autobiography, I thought that the event that played a major part in my military career and most of my subsequent career, the decision to go to Sydney and obtain a Diploma of Tropical Medicine (DTM) before I enlisted, was a matter of chance. None of my fellow-interns did that and my father did not know enough about medical training to have advised me. However, thinking over the early history of World War II, Australian troops were being directed to the Middle East in January 1940, and I may well have decided that in the Middle East a DTM would be likely to open up career possibilities not available to a raw graduate.

It was that step that led to the switch of my interests from physical anthropology (and in a university sense from a career in anatomy and cell biology) to infectious diseases and thus to my post-war career. On the way, it led to my close acquaintance with Neil Hamilton Fairley and Bill Keogh, and through them to my experience as a pathologist at the 2/2 Australian General Hospital, and, later, my appointment as a malariologist. Most importantly, if I had not been appointed as pathologist at the 2/2 AGH, I would never have met Bobbie Roberts, my future wife.

It was Bill Keogh who arranged that I should work with Burnet after the war, and later, in consultation with Burnet, to take a year's study leave with René Dubos. Three later career decisions were not matters of chance. In 1967, I decided to apply for the position of Director of the John Curtin School because I had spent so much time writing The Biology of Animal Viruses, and, without a training in biochemistry, felt so out of touch with molecular virology, that I thought it would be difficult to take up bench-work again. Then in 1973, approaching the end of that appointment as Director of the John Curtin School, I was influenced by what I saw as Hugh Ennor's mistake, namely the risk that I would think I knew all about the job if I took on a second term. Directorship of the newly established Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies offered the opportunity of indulging my interest in environmental matters, which had become prominent in my writings in the early 1970s, while still Director of the John Curtin School.

Finally, the fact that I have been able to continue writing books, book chapters and review articles, and giving occasional lectures, ever since I retired from paid employment in December 1979 depended on my continued good health, and the fact that I was working in the John Curtin School of The Australian National University, institutions that encourage such activities.