Peter Doherty, 20 years after the Nobel Prize

The phone call comes on the first Monday in October, as unswerving Swedish protocol dictates. Unaware of this, Penny Doherty answered with the trepidation a 4.20am call inevitably invites. “This is Nils Ringertz, from the Nobel Foundation.” So this would be good news. She passed the phone to her husband.

Peter Doherty learned that morning, October 7, 1996, that he would share the Nobel Prize for Medicine with his Swiss friend and colleague Rolf Zinkernagel, recognition for a discovery the pair had made in a laboratory in Canberra in the mid-‘70s. He was then only the fifth Australian scientist to gain the honour – in the years since three more have joined the club. (Australia has 16 Nobel Laureates across all disciplines.) He had a 10-minute window to dial out to share the news, Ringertz advised, after which things would get rather busy. And so it began.