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| WELCOME | Program Click here to download the full Festival of Ideas program. |
spend an evening with the Thursday 9 July |
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Festival Theme - Pushing The Limits People talk glibly as if pushing the limits is always a good thing. Often it is good of course, because by pushing the limits we reach new ideas, experiences, products and plans. Sometimes, however, the limits push back. For example, the Murray Darling Basin and world financial markets have been pushed too far and the consequences are serious. And in public policy, the limits of tolerance are always a matter of passionate debate. The 2009 Adelaide Festival of Ideas aims to be a sort of ‘over the horizon’ radar for public discussion. The object is to discern the ideas that will shape the coming decades, not just the coming months. We’ll look at issues as diverse as the geopolitics of tolerance
among nations in our region and the pursuit of scientific limits
in medicine and the physical world. We’ll engage our audience
in a discussion of the power and consequences of the ethic of exploration
which has shaped, and perhaps now risks, the modern world. |
Program Click here to download the full Festival of Ideas program. |
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Welcome As our world battles to quell the simultaneous impacts of economic downturn, environmental stress and ideological conflict, the need for enlightened thinking has rarely been more acute. Since it was launched a decade ago, the Adelaide Festival of Ideas has tackled a diversity of themes including ethics, reconciliation, addiction and theology. The 2009 Festival will, among other topics, contemplate and debate the limits that we might conceivably push in seeking solutions to some of our current pressing issues. The Festival’s program features some of the most fertile and inquiring minds from around the world, and across Australia. They will challenge and encourage us to consider how we, as a global community, might address circumstances and situations where it’s possible that the limits have already been pushed too far. I trust that the public exploration of these ideas– The Festival of Ideas adds to South Australia’s standing as a home for informed and progressive thinking, a reputation that is further enhanced by the State Government’s highly-productive Adelaide Thinkers in Residence initiative. I welcome our international and interstate visitors to this year’s Festival, and I trust that you are all inspired by the minds that you meet, engaged by the debates that arise, and enlivened by the ideas that are presented. |
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Dedication After attending Rose Park Primary School and Thebarton Technical School, Adelaide, Frank Fenner graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide. He was a pathologist and malariologist in the Australian Army Medical Corps in the 2nd AIF from 1940-1946, serving in Australia, Palestine, Egypt, New Guinea and Borneo. For his work in combating malaria in Papua New Guinea he received the award of MBE. Following war-time service he was recruited to work at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne by Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Initially they worked on smallpox in mice for which he coined the term ‘mousepox’, and later on poxvirus genetics. During this time Professor Fenner conducted pioneering studies to investigate how common virus infections spread through the body and produce disease. In 1949 he received a fellowship to study at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City, where he worked on Mycobacterium ulcerans (the “Bairnsdale bacillus”), which causes Buruli ulcer, the third most important mycobacterial disease worldwide after tuberculosis and leprosy. Here he worked with and was influenced by René Dubos, who was one of the first to In 1967 he became Director of the John Curtin School. During this time he was also Chairman of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication. Professor Fenner announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980. This success story is regarded as the greatest achievement of the World Health Organisation. Before its eradication, smallpox was one of the world’s most virulent viruses, responsible for millions of deaths, and leaving many of the victims who survived with disfiguring scars for life. Its eradication is one of the great triumphs in public health of the 20th century, and Professor Fenner’s role in this led to his award of the Japan Prize in 1988. Professor Fenner has an abiding interest in the environment, and he was appointed the foundation Director of the Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies at the ANU from 1973 to 1979. He is a keen supporter of Australia having an ecologically, socially sustainable population. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. In retirement, Frank Fenner has continued his prodigious output of significant writing on scientific and more Other major honours he has received include the Copley medal of the Royal Society (1995), Albert Einstein World Award for Science (2000), Clunies Ross Lifetime Contribution National Science and Technology Award (2002). WHO Medal, ANZAAS Medal, ANZAC Peace Prize, Matthew Flinders Medal, Britannica Australia Award for Medicine, 2002 Prime Ministers Prize for Science, ACT Senior Australian of the Year 2005. Both the Frank Fenner building which houses the ANU Medical School and Faculty of Science, and a residential college Fenner Hall at ANU, are Professor
Chris Burrell |
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