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17 Apr 2023

Professor Peter Doherty awarded Honorary Doctorate from Macau University

Laureate Professor Peter Doherty has been conferred an Honorary Doctor of Medicine from Macau University of Science and Technology.  

The honorary degrees were conferred upon “individuals in recognition of their outstanding achievements in their respective professions and valuable contributions to the well-being of society".  

Professor Doherty, who attended the ceremony remotely, said he was honoured to be recognised for his achievements by the University.  

“It is a great honour to receive an honorary doctorate from a new and respected technological institution, like Macau University,” Professor Doherty said.  

“It’s nice that we recognise individual scientists in this way, but science is really a team game and I always feel that it's the team that should be honoured.” 

Professor Doherty shared the 1996 Nobel Medicine Prize with Swiss colleague Rolf Zinkernagel, for their discoveries about transplantation and “killer” T cell-mediated immunity, an understanding that is currently translating into new cancer treatments.  

The first veterinarian to win a Nobel, he was Australian of the Year in 1997. Currently, he is a Laureate Professor and Patron of the Peter Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, where he was heavily involved in public science communication re infection and immunity through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Apart from his scientific output that can be found online, he is the author of several “lay” books, including A Light History of Hot Air, The Beginners Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell us About our Health and our World and Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, The Knowledge Wars, The Incidental Tourist and, in 2021, An Insider’s Plague Year