Saxon White

Biography

My father left the Australian Navy in 1946 and joined the staff of The King’s School, Parramatta, and we moved home to Parramatta, where we lived close to my father’s cousins, the Benauds, and of course Richie and John. At this time I finished at Woollahra Primary Opportunity Class and commenced at Sydney Boys High School moving after 6 months to Parramatta High School and then to King’s in November 1946. At King’s I became school captain and played combined GPS firsts Cricket and Rugby for 2 years. In 1953 I enrolled on Commonwealth Scholarship in Medicine at the University of Sydney and on Bursary at St Andrew’s College, but my undergraduate career was interrupted twice each for one year to tour with the Australian Rugby (Wallaby) team first to South Africa (1953) and then the British Isles, France and North America (1957-58). So in 1953 I was touring South Africa with the Wallabies when Richie was touring England simultaneously with the Australian Cricket team. As a Sydney University undergraduate, cricket and rugby club member, I played 7 rugby tests and 22 other tour games in the Australian colours, and my cricket career as an opening batsman NSW State Colts selection lapsed. I retired from all representative sport at age 24 in 1958 to concentrate on medicine. After graduation in medicine I became professorial surgical registrar at the University of NSW Prince Henry Hospital and commenced research as a National Heart Foundation Fellow for a higher doctorate in medicine supervised by Professor Paul Korner at the University of NSW in cardiovascular reflex control during hypoxia including haemorrhagic shock. I graduated MD and in 1968 I became Overseas Life Insurance Research Fellow of Australia and New Zealand with tenure in 1968 in the Department of Physiology, University of Goteborg, Sweden working with Professor Bjorn Folkow and Dr Bengt Oberg on microcirculation rheology and reflexes emanating from the heart. In 1969, the Fellowship took me to the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, La Jolla, and the Department of Cardiology, University of California, San Diego, where I worked with the Professors Gene Braunwald and Dean Franklin. This was mainly on the coronary circulation in primate and canine species in behaviour and exercise. The third year of the Fellowship was in the Cardiology Department of the University of Sydney. In 1974 I moved to the new medical school at Flinders University of South Australia, but within 18 months took the Foundation Chair of Human Physiology at the newer medical school at the University of Newcastle. We were 2 years ahead of the first undergraduate student intake and we developed an innovative curriculum, built buildings, and finally set up laboratories and took in postgraduate research students. My basic science research was in nervous control of the coronary and bronchial circulations using new ultrasonic techiniques. I also developed exercise stress testing in clinical cardiology at the Royal Newcastle Hospital and later at the new John Hunter Hospital at New Lambton. But a major innovation was our link with the Hunter Valley community in education and human research via my separate Human Performance Laboratory. We especially educated the community in the value of exercise for the maintenance of health, e.g. the HUFPUF Club of Merewether, and in endocrine research using ballet schools as a source of the female athlete. I also moved to create the Hunter Academy of Sport (1988- ) with its provision for sporting service, education and research.

Research Interest

Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy