Profile: Jacques Miller: immunologist who discovered role of the thymus

Abstract

The more so given that this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for work that ultimately builds on Miller's foundations. Since 1966, Miller's working life has been spent at Australia's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. The two giants of immunology at that time [Sir James Gowans and Sir Peter Medawar] may have been sceptical, but they urged me on! This initial scepticism followed by acceptance was to repeat itself 6 years later when Miller and his PhD student Graham Mitchell found evidence that T and B lymphocytes have diff ering origins and roles.