Dr Hilda Gardner was educated in Adelaide, South Australia. She graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1912 after a brilliant course. Her renowned brother, Howard Florey, nine years younger, was an inspiration to her in her later years. After terms of residency at the Adelaide Children's Hospital and the Women's Hospital, Melbourne, she married a South Australian, Dr John Forrest Gardner, who practised after the War in Richmond, Victoria. He died in 1929 from tetanus, possibly developing in an old war injury. There was a daughter and a son of the marriage, the son dying of septicaemia, at the age of seven years, prior to the advent of adequate chemotherapeutic agents.

Hilda Gardner became assistant bacteriologist to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1929, and took charge of the department as clinical pathologist after Dr Lucy Bryce's resignation in 1934. Her laboratory in the old Walter and Eliza Hall Institute with a minimum of staff did all the bacteriology and haematology for the 400 bed hospital. The Institute had in those days a small but extremely well-trained group of versatile scientists. One of the few laboratory training posts of those days was as assistant clinical pathologist and a succession of bright aspirants who subsequently became surgeons, neurologists, physicians and sometimes pathologists trained under her. She was a demanding taskmaster but her serious nature was readily melted by a smile, a touch of humour or a need to discuss a human problem. She was regularly consulted on bacteriological, haematological and allergy problems by clinicians because of her breadth of knowledge and willingness to extend herself to solve a problem. As a result she tended to over-commit her energies in her work. She was an excellent teacher, clinical pathology being then taught by her in a series of lectures at the hospital. Her notes were highly regarded by students. During World War II she trained a series of young doctors in clinical pathology for the Army and the director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Dr Charles Kellaway, was for a time Director of Pathology for the Army.

She was one of the pathologists instrumental in starting a formal training course for laboratory technicians under the auspices of the Australian Institute of Medical Laboratory Technologists (now Scientists) and served on their examining council.

She went overseas immediately after the War, working mainly in Oxford, her brother's home for many years. She returned refreshed and began re-organising the work in the splendid new laboratory at the new RMH. She was active in the affairs of the Australian Association of Clinical Pathologists.

In 1951 she was elected as a Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Her daughter, Dr Joan Gardner, was close to her mother and it is little surprise she became a distinguished microbiologist with a special interest in antibiotics, sterilisation and infection control.

As Hilda Gardner became older she became more forceful in her dealings with young doctors. But she was revered for her knowledge and dedication and dislike of carelessness or shoddiness. She became a severe asthmatic and was frequently out of action. Her successor, Dr David Cowling, often consulted her and she kept her microscope at the ready by her bedside.

Hilda Gardner was a pioneer of laboratory medicine. She was particularly interested in infections and infectious diseases, such as leptospirosis. Perhaps the tragedies of her own family reinforced this interest. She was not a prolific publisher of papers and she will mainly be remembered as a central figure in the training of a generation of pathologists and physicians and for her devotion to the patients of the Royal Melbourne Hospital.