1. Barry Marshall

2. Medicine: Microbiology
• Professor of clinical microbiology at the
University of Western Australia
• Microbiology: the branch of science that deals
with microorganisms and their effects on
other living organisms

3. Marshall’s Research
• Together with Robin Warren showed that the
bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of
most peptic ulcers.
• Others before him had suggested similar
theories but had failed to provide acceptable
proof.
• After failed attempts to infect piglets, Marshall
drank a petri dish containing Helicobacter
pylori

4. Impact on Society
• Proved false years worth of beliefs that peptic
ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods and
too much acid.
• This has allowed for a breakthrough
understanding the link between Helicobacter
pylori and stomach cancer

5. Elizabeth Blackburn

6. Biological Researcher
• Studies telomere, a structure at the end of
chromosomes that protects the chromosome.
• Also worked in the department of molecular
biology.

7. Blackburn’s Research
• Co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that
replenishes the telomere.

8. Blackburn recalls…
• Carol had done this experiment, and we stood, just in the
lab, and I remember sort of standing there, and she had
this -- we call it a gel. It's an autoradiogram, because there
was trace amounts of radioactivity that were used to
develop an image of the separated DNA products of what
turned out to be the telomerase enzyme reaction. I
remember looking at it and just thinking, ‘Ah! This could be
very big. This looks just right.’ It had a pattern to it. There
was a regularity to it. There was something that was not
just sort of garbage there, and that was really kind of
coming through, even though we look back at it now, we'd
say, technically, there was this, that and the other, but it
was a pattern shining through, and it just had this sort of
sense, ‘Ah! There's something real here.’