Margaret Anne Burgess

A remarkable paediatrician who pioneered research into vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases in Australia

Margaret Burgess (nee Menser, 1937–) was born in Sydney, and it is Sydney alone that can claim credit for her education and the achievements of a career spanning, unusually, laboratory, clinical and population-based research. Her contributions to medicine are of international importance to our understanding of congenital rubella and its prevention, and to clinical and public health aspects of the control of vaccine-preventable disease more generally. With more than 250 published articles and 20 book chapters, and an Order of Australia for services to public health, Margaret can rightly be considered a pre-eminent paediatric researcher of her generation.