Robert Black, Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Sydney and Director, Tropical Medicine in the Commonwealth Health Department, was the dominant figure in malariology and tropical health in Australia and the South-West Pacific for over two decades before his retirement in 1982. His contributions were not narrow and restricted but covered anthropology, epidemiology, Aboriginal health and radio-electronics, as well as malaria and tropical medicine.
Son of a bank manager, he was born in Willaura, Victoria and attended many schools before matriculating from Parramatta High School and entering medicine at the University of Sydney. He graduated with first class honours and the university medal, was professorial intern in 1940 at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and senior resident at Innisfail District Hospital.
He served in the Australian Army Medical Corps from 1941 to 1946, initially in North Queensland, Toowoomba and then in a Casualty Clearing Station in Lae where he became interested in laboratory aspects of malaria and attempted to cultivate malaria parasites. After service in other parts of New Guinea he was posted to the Blood and Serum Preparation Unit in Sydney and had some success cultivating P.falciparum parasites in vitro. He spent his last eighteen months in the LHQ Malaria Research unit at Cairns, directed by Fairley (qv 1), where he was successful in cultivating falciparum parasites. He wrote his MD thesis on the chemotherapy of malaria in vitro as part-time bacteriologist at the Kolling Institute Royal North Shore Hospital in 1946 prior to becoming Medical Research Fellow, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Appointed to the staff of School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Sydney as lecturer in tropical medicine in 1948, he became senior lecturer 1956, and was appointed professor of tropical medicine in 1963.
Black was the first to develop a method of studying in vitro action of anti-malarial drugs in the form in which they circulate in man, studies which were reactivated by others thirty to forty years later. Later he became more interested in the social aspects of malaria and the control of the disease involving education, epidemiology, eradication programmes and global activities. He considered that anthropological input was critical and so did the Diploma of Anthropology in his spare time. He put a major emphasis on anthropology in his own teaching and succeeded in having increased World Health Organization (WHO) attention paid to this. A Member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Malaria 1954 to 1982, he was a frequent consultant in many parts of the world and was the author of many manuals relating to malaria epidemiology, control and eradication. He was Australia's man at WHO committees. WHO awarded him the Darling Medal in 1985 for international services to the control of malaria, and he was the only Australian to receive the award. He held many appointments which included consultant in tropical medicine to the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps and Royal Australian Navy, and consultant physician in tropical medicine to a number of teaching hospitals in Sydney.
Following an epidemic of malaria in the Northern Territory in the late 1950s and 1960s, Robert Black was consulted and the residual foci were successfully eliminated. Following extensive studies of malaria in the Northern Territory, Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait Islands, and the establishment of a Central Register of Malaria Cases in 1969, endemic malaria was eradicated from northern Australia so that Australia was certified malaria-free by WHO in 1981. A result of his contributions to tropical medicine teaching, particularly through his continuing publications in the popular medical press directed towards local practitioners throughout Australia, was the achievement of zero fatality rates from P.falciparum malaria in Australia. This was not achieved in the USA, the UK or West Germany. He was responsible for some studies of Aboriginal health, though he seldom took credit for the studies themselves, and was a well known radio 'ham' and technical contributor.
Black's contribution to health in Australia did not attract attention outside his field and his WHO contributions were almost only appreciated by those concerned with world problems of malaria. His perception of a lack of appreciation probably accentuated his evident shyness and retiring nature. He did not deal in verbal rhetoric and polemic and seemed to prefer to write letters rather than to talk across a desk. When his advice was sought by his students and colleagues, his letters were well known for their excellence and detail which showed the endless trouble he had taken over them.
He was described as a very private, gentle, and complex person known intimately by few but was very well informed and could be a most charming and erudite conversationalist with a close friend. He did not talk to himself and made every effort to keep his long and difficult illness from any but his closest friends. He died of respiratory failure due to emphysema and cancer of the lung.