Robert Webster (virologist)

Virologist

Robert Gordon Webster (b. 1932) is an avian influenza authority who correctly posited that pandemic strains of flu arise from genes in flu virus strains in nonhumans; for example, via a reassortment of genetic segments (antigenic shift) between viruses in humans and nonhumans (especially birds) rather than by mutations (antigenic drift) in annual human flu strains.

Robert Webster was born on 5 July 1932 in Balclutha, New Zealand, and grew up on a farm. He studied microbiology on leaving school, gaining his BSc from University of Otago, New Zealand in 1955, his MSc at the same university in 1957, and his PhD from the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, in 1962. He worked as a virologist with the New Zealand Department of Agriculture in 1958 1959 before being appointed research fellow at the Department of Microbiology at ANU's John Curtin Medical School, for 1964 1966. He moved to U. S. in 1969 where he became a member of both the Department of Microbiology and the Department of Immunology at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, a city where he has lived ever since and has held many research posts.

Webster holds the Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He is also director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds, the world's only laboratory designed to study influenza at the animal human interface. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of New Zealand, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. In December 2002, he was presented with the Bristol Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Diseases Research. Webster has been awarded membership of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and has been named a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and the Royal Society of London. He is also a member of the American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Virology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He heads the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating laboratory on animal influenza.