Controversial scientist

Victor Trikojus (1902–1985) must surely rank among Australia's most controversial men of science. In this extended memoir, Ross Humphreys continues his studies of Australian scientists with an agreeable account of a man who, if not born to controversy, seems to have had controversy thrust upon him. Trikojus is credited with important wartime achievements in the production of drugs, including ascorbic acid (for vitamin C), sulphaguanidine for the treatment of dysentery, mersalyl for the control of wound sepsis, and Merthiosal for the prevention of tropical fungal growths on optical instruments. After the war he had important successes in the study of thyroid metabolism, including the discovery (with Frank Hird) of T3 (triiodothyronine). He was also well known for his dedication to the University of Melbourne where, between 1943 and 1967, he established Australia’s leading Department of Biochemistry, and for his contributions to the promotion of food quality, nutrition, and public health.

Among the rare Sydney University graduates to receive an 1851 Exhibition, Trikojus returned from his doctoral years in Oxford and Munich with much to offer his alma mater. Notwithstanding his scientific reputation, he is perhaps best remembered for his wartime detention as an alleged pro-Nazi sympathiser, an image that was in 1999 wildly exaggerated by articles in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and on SBS television. The son of a German-born, naturalised Australian father, Trikojus was caught up in the tide of anti-Nazi (mixed with anti-communist) hysteria that coursed through Australia in 1940, leading to his formal detention in 1941, and to restrictions on his movements until 1944. A less robust character might have given way before what now seems singularly misjudged persecution by ill-informed and ill-advised, if not actually incompetent, security services. During and after the war, Trikojus, whose European manner and conservative mannerisms conjured an image of the “other” in an Australia still deeply British in both form and appearance, attracted misunderstanding. To this image, his outspoken, Russian-born wife of mixed European descent, may have inadvertently contributed. At the same time, his dealings with leading Australian scientists were widely praised, and warmly supported.

Humphreys makes good use of the Trikojus archives and, by restoring him to his context, makes fresh sense of his life. If, at times, the account reads like a brief for the defence, the outcome is no worse for that. The book goes well beyond the official biography,1 and recaptures a sense of what life in wartime (and Cold War) Australia could be like for those who differed from the familiar norm. At the same time, it reminds us what a difference a “foreigner” can make to Australian cultural and intellectual life. Trikojus: a Scientist for interesting times was released in time to coincide with the opening of the new Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne, and includes a prefatory appreciation by Australia’s most recent medical Nobel Prize winner, Peter Doherty.

Roy MacLeodEmeritus Professor of History University of Sydney, NSW

1. Legge JW, Gibson F. Victor Martin Trikojus, 1902-1985. Hist Rec Aust Sci 1987; 6: 519-531.