Few physicians in their lifetime have the opportunity to be involved in, let alone responsible for, as many important advances in therapeutics and public health as did Frederick Grantley Morgan during his career.

After graduating MB BS with honours from Melbourne University in 1916 he was successively resident medical officer in 1916, then surgical registrar in 1917, at the Melbourne Hospital, and in the period to December 1919 was a Stewart scholar and lecturer in pathology, lecturer in surgery and general pathology to dental students, tutor in medicine and surgery at Ormond College at Melbourne University, junior pathologist at Melbourne Hospital and assistant to Professor Sir Harry Allen, the honorary director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Grantley Morgan then spent a short period as medical officer at the Mental Diseases Hospital, New Norfolk, Tasmania, and also undertook research into leprosy in Nauru and then worked as medical field officer with the Rockefeller Foundation Filaria and Intestinal Parasites Survey in Queensland before joining the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories on 14 February, 1921.

Grantley Morgan worked at CSL from 1921 until his retirement in 1956 at the age of sixty-five years. After his initial appointment as assistant bacteriologist he became assistant director to Dr WJ Penfold in 1925 and after a year as acting director in 1926 he was appointed director on 3 March, 1927. His term of twenty-nine years as director of CSL is never likely to be equalled either in length or for the dramatic changes in medicine which occurred during his years in charge of that important institute. His own work was broad and extensive and he frequently published on important public health research and advances.

In his early years at CSL he was intimately involved in the introduction of insulin to Australia, and then an extensive range of human and veterinary vaccines. Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, BCG and poliomyelitis vaccines were some of the more dramatic advances during his time and these classical vaccines still play a most important part in control of communicable diseases. In 1929, twelve children died as a result of receiving diphtheria toxin-antitoxin injections contaminated with staphylococci. Although CSL was exonerated by the subsequent Royal Commission the ‘Bundaberg’ incident bore very heavily on Grantley Morgan as director and many felt that he displayed excessive caution and conservatism in subsequent years.

However he created an environment in which many medical and biological scientists flourished. Extremely important work which laid the foundation for subsequent developments in antivenom therapy was done in conjunction with CH Kellaway; their work in the late 1920s and early 1930s established the basis for effective treatment against snake-bite in Australia. The work in association with Jean McNamara on passive immunisation in poliomyelitis using human sera gave a great stimulus to the treatment of that dread disease. He was particularly proud that he had established a separate research function at CSL and was fortunate to have the services of EV (‘Bill’) Keogh at that time.

World War II brought great demands for vaccines and blood grouping sera from the Pacific and South-East Asian areas as far as India, but the commencement of penicillin fermentation in 1944 and the advances in blood grouping, plasma therapy and introduction of the Cohn ethanol fractionation process for human serum fractionation in the early 1950s are sagas in themselves.

Grantley Morgan married his wife Dorothy in 1930 and his three sons were brought up with the Laboratories as their home until his retirement in 1956. He and his family lived in the director’s residence on site at CSL Parkville which, despite its semi-rural atmosphere in the 1930s, posed a burden on the director and his family that few would tolerate today.