Sitting one degree from greatness
By Rosemary Luke
It
was August, 2001 and Dr Basil Hetzel was in his favourite North Adelaide
restaurant, The Pink Pig.
He and others were celebrating the recent publication of a memoir of Peter Mathews, a charismatic former preacher and missionary, about whom each had written a chapter in the publication.
“You should write your memoirs, Basil,” said Donald Sarre, uncle of UniSA’s Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, Rick Sarre.
“I had thought about it,” conceded Dr Hetzel quietly, “just for the family, of course”.
Cries of protest indicated the assembled company thought a much wider audience would appreciate reading the story of Dr Hetzel’s remarkable life.
I cheerfully volunteered to edit the book, with no idea of what a long but fascinating journey I was about to begin.
Four years later we are approaching publication day. Chance and Commitment: Memoirs of a Medical Scientist will be published by South Australia’s Wakefield Press.
Michael Bollen, publisher at Wakefield, realised that Dr Hetzel’s life and work had the makings of an important South Australian book.
The publication will follow this month’s Festival of Ideas, which is dedicated to Dr Hetzel.
The memoir encompasses several distinct but related careers: medical research scientist, medical educator and clinician, public health researcher and advocate, and his post-retirement careers of Lieutenant Governor and UniSA Chancellor.
Alongside this sits a rich family life, international travel, lasting friendships and almost an entire library of publications.
Underpinning all these is Dr Hetzel’s commitment to a robust and intellectually coherent brand of Christianity, his concern for the common good and doing what he could to improve the lot of humankind.
Dr Hetzel, as one of his former staff remarked at the opening of the
Basil Hetzel Building at City East campus in May, is a great talker. He even
suggested that other meetings were always scheduled two hours after
departmental staff meetings, to ensure the staff meetings actually ended.
So the book is full of anecdotes: boarding school in Adelaide in the 1930s,
being embarrassed by his children’s pranks overseas, amazing experiences of
international colleagues who survived WWII in Eastern Europe or the Cultural
Revolution in China, and throwaway lines about meeting Kennedys in the White
House, or Howard Florey in Dr Hetzel’s own laboratory.
Dr Hetzel is a great man whose work has improved the lives of 2 billion people in 130 countries at risk of serious iodine deficiency disorders. But you’d never pick that from his gentle, modest, often impishly wicked, and always courteous conversation.
In the book, likewise, he is generous to a fault in acknowledging the contributions of others to his career. So it remained for the foreword’s writer, Professor Stephen Leeder, to spell out Dr Hetzel’s remarkable stature.
For me the interest lay not in the six (or two) degrees of separation from famous people but in the privilege I had to sit just one degree from Dr Hetzel’s particular form of greatness.
Chance and Commitment provides fascinating insights into the life of a remarkable 20th century scientist. It is a book to be read and enjoyed by those in the UniSA community who know and love Basil Hetzel.
In her day job Rosemary Luke is Executive Officer to the Pro Vice Chancellor: Academic and Learning Support.
To order a copy of the book, price to be decided, email sales@wakefieldpress.com.au with your credit card number.
Mention UniSANews to receive free postage and packaging.