Dear Vice-Chancellor,

I am writing to tell you that I am interested in the position of Director, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies. I therefore wish to withdraw from the Electoral Committee for that post. It may be useful to you if I outline how a person whose scientific career has been in animal virology is now interested in such a post. In the first place, my family background gave me a broad interest in natural sciences, and the medical course itself provided a broad if superficial training in human biology. During my medical course I took Botany 1 and Geology 1 as additional science subjects, and spent much of my spare time working with anthropologists and others in the South Australian Museum. After graduating I spent about half of my army career (which extended from June 1940 to February 1946) as a malariologist, a post which involved the supervision of units for malaria control and entomological research as well as the diagnosis of malaria and scrub typhus. Subsequently my first scientific contacts were with F. M. Burnet and R. J. Dubos, men with whom I have maintained close associations and who have become elder statesmen in the environment-resource area. Likewise, although I have been interested in the cellular and molecular biology of viruses as well as the pathogenesis of viral diseases, my principal experimental work for a number of years (1951–64) involved collaborative studies with animal ecologists and entomologists in CSIRO, on the ecology of myxomatosis.

My appointment in 1958 as Secretary, Biological Sciences, of the Australian Academy of Sciences further broadened my responsibilities and interests. In that position I was in part responsible for producing reports on the desirability of establishing the Research School of Biological Sciences in the ANU, and on setting up a Museum of Australian Biology and Biological Survey of Australia. In 1967–68 I resumed contact with the Biological Survey as Chairman of the Flora and Fauna Committee of the Academy, that produced a second report, published in 1969, that is now under active consideration by Government.

I moved into the more deliberate consideration of environmental problems during the preparation of a paper delivered at a symposium in September 1969, given in honour of Macfarlane Burnet's 70th birthday. In the same year I became Chairman of the ANU Committee on Natural Resources (now the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies) that prepared the report that was subsequently accepted by Council and the AUC. Since then I have been Chairman of the Working Group of the Centre for Natural Resources and its representative on the Users Committee for the Life Sciences Library Building. During the last three years I have also become involved in several other committees concerned with environmental and resource problems. As I indicate, these vary in the intensity of their activities, but they have brought me into close contact with problems of resource management and with people involved with environmental questions.

The Australian Academy of Science

• Chairman, Flora and Fauna Committee since November 1967 (intermittently active)
• Chairman, Committee on National Parks and Conservation, since 1970 (relatively inactive)
• Chairman, National Committee for SCOPE, since 1971, (relatively inactive)
• Member, Standing Committee on the Environment, since 1970 (active)

National Activities

• Vice President, Australian Conservation Foundation, since October 1971 (active)
• Chairman, Study Group on International Aspects of the Human Environment (Australian Institute of International Affairs), since September 1972 (just being activated)
• Chairman, Three Academies Project Committee on Botany Bay, since August 1972 (active)
• Member, Advisory Council of CSIRO, since 1970 (intermittently active)
• Member, National Committee on Man and the Biosphere (UNESCO), since 1971 (relatively active)
• Member, Executive Committee of the Fact Finding Study on the Alligator Rivers Area, Northern Territory, since August 1972 (active)

International Activities

• Member, Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) since 1971 (intermittently active)

I have also given a few addresses on environmental topics that have been published.

• 1969 Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, three faces of science. Australasian Annals of Medicine , vol. 18, 351–60.
• 1970 The effects of changing social organization on the infectious diseases of man. In The Impact of Civilization on the Biology of Man (S. V. Boyden, ed.), pp. 48–68, ANU Press.
• An overview of man and his environment in Australia. Proceedings of the First International Congress on Domiciliary Nursing , pp. 1–8.
• 1971 The environment. In How Many Australians? Immigration and Growth. Proceedings of the 37th Summer School of the Australian Institute of Political Science, pp. 37–60. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.

I attach a curriculum vitae and a list of publications.

Yours sincerely,

Frank Fenner