Emeritus Professor Derek Denton AC (1924-2022), physiologist, was born in Launceston and graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1947. What became a pre-eminent career as a research physiologist commenced with a new discovery on kidney function in 1948, when he was appointed to the Walter and Eliza Hall Research Institute. As a Research Fellow with the National Health and Medical Research Council he set up the Ionic Research Unit in the University of Melbourne's Department of Physiology in 1949. Between 1964 and 1970 he headed up the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology; and from 1971 he was founding director of the Howard Florey Institute, which became one of the world's leading medical research facilities under his leadership. Recognised internationally as an authority on the regulation of salt and water metabolism – he explained the mechanism of thirst – Denton was elected to a host of the most distinguished academies and societies worldwide, including the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physicians, the National Academy of Science (USA) and the French Academy of Sciences. He was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and of Trinity College, University of Melbourne; and from 1978 until 1990 he was a member of the jury of the Lasker Prize, one of the world's major scientific awards. Throughout his career Denton was interested principally in genetic and learned instinctive behaviour, and how genetically determined mechanisms are regulated by chemical and hormonal changes in the body and brain; later, he turned to philosophical reflections on consciousness. His books include The Hunger for Salt (1983) and The Primordial Emotions (2005, 2006).
Artist Janet Dawson painted an oil portrait of Derek Denton, which has been on display at the Royal Society's Carlton House Terrace since 2010. This drawing is similar in appearance. Both portraits are drawn from photographs and the artist's memories and show Denton as he was in the late 1960s, when he and his wife Margaret Scott, a leading ballerina, were part of a circle that included Dawson and other artists.
Gift of Professor Derek Denton AC and Dame Margaret Scott AC 2014. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Janet Dawson/Copyright Agency, 2022
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