Making Waves: Medicine, Public Health, Universities and Beyond

Leading Australian public health expert and the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne reveals his ethos, drives and the highs and lows of a life built on making waves. Throughout his academic and medical careers, David Penington has been an agent of change. In his fascinating memoirs, one of Australia's leading public health experts and the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne reveals his ethos, drives and the highs and lows of a life built on making waves. Appointed at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, he fostered new medical research specialty areas in haematology, medical oncology, endocrinology, gastroenterology and later neurology, and renal disease--a strategic development for a public hospital in the early 1970s. At the University of Melbourne, he was Professor and then Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, before becoming Vice Chancellor in 1988. During his tenure, he strongly resisted major and damaging government intrusion into the operations of universities, all the while reforming the education, research and management practices at the University of Melbourne. He has been at the forefront of national public health policy for more than twenty years, including four years chairing the National AIDS Task Force for the Hawke government. In 1984 he was Chair of the National Committee of Inquiry into a dispute between the government and the medical profession over public hospitals, which was key to the implementation of the Medicare system. He has also led two inquiries into illicit drug policies. Making Waves details a tireless leader who at every stage of his working life has never shunned public controversy in a bid to improve the lives of all Australians.

About the Author :
Born in Melbourne, David Penington received his medical education at home and at Oxford, and held academic and hospital appointments at The London Hospital. By 1967, he was back in Australia with an English-born wife and family to pursue his first loves--research, teaching and the care of sick people--in an academic post at the University of Melbourne. His subsequent career included seventeen years as Professor of Medicine, eight of which he also spent as Dean of the Faculty. He became Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 1988, completing at the end of 1995. From 1983, there were four years of national public health leadership in AIDS for the Hawke government, and in the mid-1980s he chaired a national Committee of Inquiry that was instrumental in allowing Medicare to be introduced. He has also worked for the Red Cross, including seven years as Chair of the National Blood Transfusion Committee, and setting up blood transfusion aid programs in Nepal and China. He has since contributed to public policy on illicit drugs, chaired Cochlear Ltd, and presided over the building of the Melbourne Museum. He continues to contribute to the development of health policy and research in Australia.