BIOGRAPHY Barry Marshall's Life and Work history:

Born Sept. 30, 1951 in Kalgoorlie (Near Perth), Western Australia.
1968-74 M.B., B.S. (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery), Univ. of Western Australia at Perth.
1977-84 Registrar, Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital
1985-86 NHMRC Research Fellow, Gastroenterology, Royal Perth Hospital
1986-94 Research Fellow and Professor of Medicine, Univ. of Virginia
1996 Professor of Research in Internal Medicine, Univ. of Virginia
1997 Clinical Professor of Medicine, Univ. of Western Australia
1999 Clinical Professor of Microbiology, Univ. of Western Australia
2003 NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow, Univ. of Western Australia

Highlights from the Autobiography Presented at the Nobel Prize Ceremony:

On another occasion my brothers decided to fly lighter-than-air balloons for our team at the school sports carnival. Since helium was not available, we built a device which pressurised domestic house gas and filled the balloons. Our technology was rather primitive however and these balloons contained quite a bit of air as well, but they did float satisfactorily. My father recognised this and warned us that they might be a little dangerous if they came in contact with an open flame. As an example, he demonstrated the risk by touching a lighted cigarette to one of the balloons as it floated under the back patio. He was enveloped in a ball of flame and his eyebrows were singed off.

I was undifferentiated in that I wasn't coming from a background in gastroenterology so that my knowledge and ideas were founded in general medical basic science rather than the dogma one was required to learn in specialist medicine. As a trainee general physician with broader training, I was comfortable with the notion of infectious disease and antibiotic therapies. I am told by others that I have a lateral thinking broad approach to problems, sometimes to my detriment. In school my grades always suffered because I was continually mucking about with irrelevant side issues which I often found to be more interesting.

Over the years we took lots of chances. I took jobs on inadequate pay for many years. As my contemporaries were making their careers and achieving success I seemed to be falling further behind.

At the same time I was successfully experimentally treating patients who had suffered with life threatening ulcer disease for years. Some of my patients had postponed surgery which became unnecessary after a simple 2 week course of antibiotics and bismuth.



What [Warren] didn't know was that the journalist he was speaking to was from the "Star" newspaper, a tabloid that often features with stories about alien babies being adopted by Nancy Reagan. This was right up their alley. The next day the story appeared, "Guinea-pig doctor discovers new cure for ulcers ... and the cause." This became one of the serendipitous, life changing events in my life and I have Rob's temper to thank for it. Firstly, I was contacted by a continuous line of patients in the USA who read the story and were desperate for treatment. I was able to help. I was treating patients by proxy in the USA as early as 1984.



Selected Honors

1987 Third Prize, American Journal of Gastroenterology Best Paper for 1987 Award
Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research 1995
1997 Kilby Prize
1998 Australian Achiever Award
McFarlane Burnet Fellowship
2003 Silver Seal – University of Bologna
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005