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College Roll Bio
Platt, Albert Edward
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Qualifications
MB BS Syd (1927) DTM&H Syd (1931) Dip Bact Lond (1933) MD Adel (1937) FRACP (1938) (Foundation)
Born
07/06/1901
Died
08/04/1948
Albert Edward Platt was born in Perth WA, but much of his school life was spent in New South Wales. He attended Albury High School and Fort Street High School and then studied medicine at the University of Sydney, where he graduated in 1927. Immediately following graduation he spent about one and a half years as resident medical officer and resident pathologist at Parramatta General Hospital and Parramatta Mental Hospital, then served for more than three years as government medical officer in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. The period in New Guinea was probably crucial in determining Platt's subsequent career. He acquired considerable experience in tropical medicine (and gained a DTM&H Sydney), accumulated a store of anecdotes on life in New Guinea under the Australian mandate and was certainly stimulated to develop his undoubted flair for improvisation in the laboratory.
Platt spent 1933 in the London School of Hygiene where he was awarded a Dip Bact, and then 1934 in the University of Cambridge as Gwyneath Pretty Research Student and demonstrator in the department of pathology. In 1935 he returned to Australia to take up the appointment of lecturer in charge of the department of bacteriology in the University of Adelaide, and gained his MD (Adelaide) in 1937. In the following year Dr Platt was appointed professor of bacteriology and later also deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science. He was admitted as a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
Dr Platt was a pioneer proponent of the view that such subjects as bacteriology and biochemistry are not minor facets of medicine but subjects worthy of specialist study by students of science as well as students of medicine. His commitment to this view finally resulted in the establishment of a full course in bacteriology for students of science in the University of Adelaide. In 1942, Professor Platt resigned from the University of Adelaide to accept the position of bacteriologist at the Prince Henry Hospital, Sydney's largest hospital for infectious diseases, and was also appointed acting director of the McIlrath Department of Pathology. Platt's work and interests veered more and more towards epidemiology and preventive medicine, so that in 1946 he was appointed director of the newly constituted Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Prince Henry Hospital.
Dr Platt was a man of gentle and retiring disposition and although he was enthusiastic, persuasive and forceful in presenting a proposition to colleagues and students, he was less successful with other audiences. For example, in a news conference during one of the childhood epidemics of the day, which coincided with a government campaign of slum clearance, he said that one likely effect of congested living conditions was the development of a level of immunity in survivors higher than that in the general population. To Platt's horror, reports in the papers on the next day were mostly written around the theme `professor opposes slum clearance'.
This enviable record was terminated when Platt died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 1948. He was survived by his widow and son. His contributions to the medical and scientific literature were numerous and wide-ranging, and well represented the state of bacteriology in the 1930s and 1940s.
Author
RJ BARTHOLOMEW
References
Med J Aust
, 1948,
1
, 635.
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:35 PM
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