Joseph 'Joe' Bornstein was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1918. His family immigrated to Australia in 1928. His father was an accountant, his mother a milliner. Together they established a millinery business in Melbourne. Joe was educated at East Brunswick Primary School and University High School. He graduated MBBS from the University of Melbourne in 1941. After residency at the Alfred Hospital, he served in the Australian Army Medical Corps from 1942 to 1946, mainly in Queensland where in Cairns he had contact with the malaria research program.

Returning to the Alfred Hospital as a registrar, he became interested in diabetes and with the guidance of Ewan Downie obtained an NHMRC fellowship to work at the Baker Research Institute with Basil Corkill. In 1949, with the assistance of Phyllis Trewella, he became the first person to measure insulin in the plasma of normal and diabetic humans. This was achieved by a bioassay using the technical triumph of the alloxan diabetic hypophysectomised adrenalectomised rat and confirmed the concept of two types of diabetes; insulin deficient – Type I, and insulin resistant – Type II, as separate syndromes.

He then spent two years with Professor Charles Gray and Dr Robin Lawrence at King’s College Hospital London, and from 1951 to 1953, worked in St Louis in the biochemistry department of the Nobel Prize winners Carl and Gerty Cori. Returning to Australia, he was a research fellow in the department of biochemistry, University of Melbourne from 1954 to 1956, and from the opening of the Diabetic and Metabolic Unit at the Alfred Hospital, director of research. In 1961, he became the foundation professor of Biochemistry at Monash University, and remained in this position until his retirement in 1983.

As a young man he acquired the name Ginger on account of his flaming red hair, which remained a bald rim in later life. In 1949, he married Gertie Hiller, a medical graduate who later became cytologist to the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne. They had three sons, Joel, Phillip and Michael. Joel is a Professor of Physiology at the University of Melbourne.

Joe Bornstein’s research interests were primarily in carbohydrate metabolism, initially with insulin assay and antagonists to insulin action, and later with the effects of peptide fractions of pituitary hormones in accelerating or inhibiting carbohydrate metabolism. During his 22 years at Monash University, he oversaw many post-graduates who later became leaders in biochemical and research departments throughout Australia, and overseas. He published many scientific papers and reviews, and was never afraid to propose, and defend, often-controversial hypotheses. An inveterate smoker, he suffered a series of cerebral thromboses, and later a carcinoma of the prostate which contributed to his death.