Front Page
News
In Brief
Research
Out and About
News and Notes
Classified
Obituary
Convocation
Papers & Presentations
Notable
Search this issue
The Gazette Homepage
Division of University Relations Homepage
E-Mail Us
Front Page
News
In Brief
Research
Out and About
News and Notes
Classified
Obituary
Flashback
Employment
Papers & Presentations
Notable
Search this issue
The Gazette Homepage
Division of University Relations Homepage
E-Mail Us
Thursday,
May 31, 10 a.m.
Oration honouring Wesley Whitten
Oration honouring Wesley Whitten
Wesley
Whitten
It is a good morning exercise
for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day
before breakfast. It keeps him young.” Inspecting our honorary
graduand this morning, we see that Konrad Lorenz was right. In
his life of scientific endeavour, Wes Whitten has developed and
discarded many hypotheses, making others redundant by proving
them correct. Lord Chesterfield wrote that “A man who has
great knowledge from experience and observation is a being as
different from and as superior to a man of mere book-knowledge,
as a well-managed horse is to an ass.” Dr. Whitten’s
basic research, driven by curiosity, proceeded so notably because,
realizing the significance of chance observations, he followed
them up.
His first degree was in veterinary science from the University
of Sydney, south across the harbour from the animal haven of
Taronga but close to the semilunar heaven of Bondi, where in
youth he surfed not until he was tired out (as most of us would
say) but, ever the scientist, “... until [his] glycogen
stores were exhausted.” After war service with the Australian
Army Veterinary Corps, he studied reproduction in sheep before
joining the Australian National University, where he downscaled
the size of his research objects, studying the endocrinology
of delayed reproduction in mice (a consummation devoutly to be
wished). Overcrowding is the major problem of this world and
to assuage this Dr. Whitten reasoned that a successful search
for new contraceptives would facilitate the control of fertility
in man and other pest species.
Horace Walpole wrote that the three Princes of Serendip had the
unusual talent of “always making discoveries, by accidents
and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” Thus
Dr. Whitten, using the pure water of Canberra, was first to achieve
the in vitro fertilization and culture of mammalian embryos,
something previously inhibited by the chlorinated water of other
cities, while available eggs fresh from the henhouse provided
nutrient albumen and supplied the unrecognized but necessarily
rich levels of carbon dioxide. But there was more to the medium
than this. While assuming that the embryos were anaerobic, he
took the trouble to test this faulty supposition by adding calcium
lactate to the culture medium, and achieved thereby embryonic
growth through stages hitherto unrealized. Thus was Whitten’s
medium created, the standard in all embryonic culture experiments
for the last half-century, allowing studies of development that
would otherwise have been impossible. Modestly, Dr. Whitten has
implicated chance; but chance, Mr. Chancellor, favours only the
prepared mind.
Gender selection by the opposite sex is, fortunately, a key factor
in mammalian evolution. Male magpies are not family-oriented,
but when Dr. Whitten gave them estrogens, they went all broody
and started to build nests. Throughout the animal kingdom the
ordering of life depends on the chemical senses and Dr. Whitten
has explored the role of chemistry in the growth, development
and social activity of animals over the last forty years in Australia,
Newfoundland and Bar Harbour, Maine. He has shown that female
mice caged together experience inhibition of their normal sexual
cycles, while upon exposure to male mice (or their urine) their
cycles recommence with profligate urgency, a pattern of behaviour
appropriately not researched in humans. This is the Whitten effect,
discovered after careful preparation, meticulous observation
and the use of low technology (specifically, disposable toothpicks),
demonstrating for the first time in mammals the subtle imperatives
of pheromones. Again, his own 20-20 olfactory memory, primed
by early days in the Australian outback, allowed him to recognize
the red foxes’ yellow visiting cards in the snows of Maine.
This led to the synthesis of their active olfactory ingredient
and to further experiments with it in the wild, producing emphatic
responses from other foxes, which further substantiated the pheromonal
puissance.
This honorary graduand shows every attribute of the scholar-scientist:
wide-pervading interests; a knowledge base expanded by experience
and observation; receptiveness to the challenges of the unusual;
the creative ordering of discordancy; simple practicality in
finding methods for their solution and an overall motivating
purpose, transcending the drudgery of the laboratory in pursuit
of a higher goal. Dr. Whitten’s quiet work on single dividing
cells has benefitted the world’s divided populations by
revealing the earliest processes of the ingenious machine of
nature, allowing mankind a glimpse of divine control.
Albert Camus believed that “Great ideas come into the world
on doves’ feet. If we listen closely, we will distinguish
the gentle whisper of life and hope.” Mr. Chancellor, the
Whitten is a popular name of the Wayfarer tree. I present to
you a scientist who has steered his prepared mind through the
way of productive research; and science has fared well. His record
of practical insights has led others to emulate his simple, logical
approach to research questions. To honour this progenitor of
our potential control of the first steps of life, this provider
of reasonable hope that we people of the earth shall have the
means to manage our numbers responsibly, I present to you, for
the degree of doctor of science, honoris causa, Wesley
Kingston Whitten.
Dr. William Pryse-Phillips
University Orator
|
|
|
|