Biochemist honoured on Australia Day

A POINT Lonsdale biology expert and teacher has been posthumously appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in today’s (Friday, January 26) Australia Day Honours List.

The late Emeritus Professor William Sawyer received the AM for significant service to tertiary education, and to biochemistry.

Professor Sawyer is best known for his work at the University of Melbourne, where he was the former Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology

A lecturer from 1968-1973 and a senior lecturer from 1973-1991, he was a member of the university’s Patent and Intellectual Property Committee in the early 1990s and a founding member and convenor of the Early Career Researchers Support Program from 2004-2013.

His decades of work at the university are now recognised by the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology’s presentation of the Sawyer Medal.

Professor Sawyer also won two awards of his own: the Lemberg Medal from the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2022 and the David Syme Research Prize from the University of Melbourne in 1980.

He was a former president of the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (FAOBMB) and the Australian Society for Biophysics, among many other roles.

His work has been cited in more than 300 journals in fluorescence spectrometry.

Professor Sawyer died in September 2023 at the age of 83. He is survived by his wife, Diana.

There were four people from the Bellarine who were awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) on Australia Day. They were:

• Cathryn Norma Nixon, of St Leonards, for service to choral music, and to conservation and the environment
• Edward Leonard Pitfield, of Leopold, for service to youth, and to the community
• Dawn Lorraine Macdonald, of Barwon Heads, for service to golf, and to the community, and
• Bruce James Wilson, of Barwon Heads, for service to the community, and to agricultural education.

Anyone can nominate any Australian for an award in the Order of Australia. If you know someone worthy, nominate them now at gg.gov.au