Initial arguments for a biological science school at the ANU were being made as early as 1946, namely by Sir David Rivett of the CSIR. H.C. Coombs overrode these calls arguing that the four initial schools needed to be established before any other could be added. Frank Fenner, Secretary (Biological Sciences) in the Australian Academy of Sciences in 1961 championed the cause of a biological sciences school at the ANU (Foster and Varghese 1996). As a response to Fenner's urgings the Academy set up a Flora and Fauna Committee whose members included Fenner, Hugh Ennor and Leonard Huxley, the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU.

 

Although the committee failed to reach the necessary consensus to establish a school of biological sciences, there was sufficient support for the idea that in 1963 Fenner was able to approach the new professor of genetics at the JCSMR, David Catcheside, to help him develop a detailed plan. Catcheside had been considering the nature of biology as a discipline for a number of years and had become convinced of a need for an integrated approach to the biological sciences (Foster and Varghese 1996). Catcheside noted that although their methodologies and/or objects of study generally defined the traditional divisions of biological research, the function of biology as a whole was to explain the nature of life. Catcheside proposed that the new school should abandon this traditional specialisation and concentrate on four specific problems: the relation between molecular structure and function, with specific reference to proteins and nucleic acids; the mechanisms of development and differentiation; the dynamics of populations; and animal behaviour (Foster and Varghese 1996).

 

Catcheside advocated a school with no departments, permitting an easy adaptation to new research interests. With its inauguration in 1967, Catcheside moved from the JCSMR to become the first director and professors were appointed to two of the four selected fields: Ralph Slatyer accepted a chair in Environmental and Population Biology and Dennis Carr came to a chair in Cellular and Developmental Biology. The open structure that Catcheside had originally argued for did not eventuate and each new professor undertook research programs that had little or no relevance to others being undertaken in the School. By 1969 he acknowledged that each of the separate areas were effectively acting as departments and he formally instituted four departments: Genetics, Developmental Biology, Environmental Biology and Behavioural Biology.

 

Further expansion of the School took place with the creation the Molecular Biology and Taxonomy Groups and before long two new departments were added, in Neurobiology and Population Biology. By 1975 the School had 65 academic staff and 50 research students and a report from that year described major achievements in all departments.