Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 21 October
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
The Edge, Fed Square
The Atrium Flinders Street Federation Square Melbourne Victoria 3000
Get directions
In Conversation with Jennifer Byrne
Professor Peter Doherty’s extraordinary scientific contribution was recognised in 1996 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. In the following year he was made Australian of the Year. Through his books, A Light History of Hot Air and The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize we learned that he was also a gifted storyteller and raconteur.
In partnership with the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Matter of Life and Death series of events focuses on some of the big issues in life, art and ideas.
Featuring
Jennifer Byrne
Jennifer Byrne is a senior journalist and broadcaster who has worked in all arms of the media: print, radio and television.
Having done her cadetship at the Age and worked on UK’s Fleet Street, she was a founding reporter with Channel Nine’s Sunday programme and spent some 12 years traveling the world for 60 Minutes and as anchor for Foreign Correspondent. She was publishing director of Reed Books, morning presenter on ABC radio, won national awards as interviewer and columnist for the Bulletin and, in May 2006, returned to TV to create the country’s first televised Book Club, which ran on the ABC for 11 years until December 2019.
Alongside books, Jennifer’s favourite pastime – far too serious to be called a hobby – has since the age of two been the playing of games. Including quizzes, cards, board games, and crosswords (physical and electronic). To be invited to become the first Australian host of Mastermind – a show she grew up watching, of course – is the realisation of a dream she didn’t know she had. Jennifer hosted series two of Mastermind plus Celebrity Mastermind in 2020.
Peter Doherty
A graduate of the University of Queensland School of Veterinary Science, Peter Doherty shared the 1996 Nobel Medicine Prize for his immunology research and was the 1997 Australian of the Year.
Since then, he has gone in to bat for evidence-based reality, relating to areas as diverse as childhood vaccination, global hunger and anthropogenic climate change. So far, he has published six books on science including The Incidental Tourist and his latest, An Insider's Plague Year.