WEHI head gets pontifical appointment

Prof Suzanne Cory, director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, has been appointed a member of the Pope’s scientific advisory council, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

“It came as a big surprise and of course it’s a very great honour and I was delighted, it’s a very prestigious group of scientists,” Cory said.

The 400-year-old academy has its origins in the Academy of Lynxes, which was established in Rome in 1603 by the then Pope and led by scientist Galileo Galilei. Dissolved, reformed and renamed since these early days, the academy now focuses on investigating specific scientific disciplines as well as promoting interdisciplinary co-operation.

New members are elected to the academy on the basis of the high scientific value of their work and their high moral profile.

“It obviously is a body of experts that can be called upon,” she said. “I certainly don’t expect be playing any role in any doctrinal matters.”

Although the international nature of the academy makes it unusual, Cory said its purpose, like other academies of science, is to ensure that scientific research progresses and has the freedom to prosper.

“I’m very proud to represent women scientists at that academy, there aren’t many women in the academy and I feel very conscious that I will be in a sense representing women in science as well as Australian scientists,” she said.

Cory joins a group of about 80 eminent scientists on the academy. The academy has had numerous Nobel Prize winners amongst its past members, including Australian Sir John Eccles, who won the Nobel prize for medicine and physiology in 1963 for his work in neurophysiology.

Cory will attend a ceremony in Rome in November, at which she will meet the Pope and be officially admitted to the academy.