PM Transcripts

FOR PRESS: P. M. No. 51/ 1969
FLOREY MEMORIAL FUND
Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
The Commonwealth Government is to make a
contribution of $ 10, 000 to the fund which is being established
to perpetuate the memory of Lord Florey.
The Florey Memorial Fund is being sponsored
jointly by the Councils of the Royal Society and the Australian
National University, with appeals in Australia and Britain.
It is proposed that the memorial should take
the form of post-doctoral visiting fellowships between Australia
and the United Kingdom, to be known as Florey Fellowships.
The awards will be made for investigation in the biomedical
sciences in fields related to Florey's own work.
Lord Florey, who was born in Adelaide in 1898,
will be best remembered for his pioneering research in the
production and use of Penicillin, for which he shared the Nobel
Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1945. Lord Florey was
President of the Royal Society from 1960-65 and Chancellor of
the Australian National University from 1965 until his death in
1968. Although Lord Florey spent most of his working life in
England he took a great interest In science in Australia, in
particular in the establishment of the Australian National
University. It is fitting, therefore, that the memorial to Lord
Florey should be in the form of scholarships to enable an
interchange of young scholars between Australia and the United
Kingdom. CANBERRA 17 June 1969