Interview with Stephen Boyden – Human Ecologist and Biohistorian

Interview conducted December 2012 at Emeritus Faculty, ANU
Producer, Interviewer and Editor - Peter Stewart
Engineer - Nik Fominas

Biographical introduction: Stephen Vickers Boyden was born in London in 1925. After graduating in Veterinary Science in London in 1947, he worked at the University of Cambridge and the Rockefeller Institute in New York. He received his PhD in immunology from Cambridge in 1951. After a year at the Pasteur Institute in Paris Stephen ran the WHO Tuberculosis Immunisation Research Centre in Copenhagen for eight years. From 1960 he worked at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University in Canberra. He was appointed Fellow of the Australian Academy in 1966 for his work in haemagglutination (red blood cell clumping) in relation to aspects of bacterial and viral pathogenesis.

A few years later he moved away from molecular and cellular science into the larger scale of human ecology and the intersection between human society and the processes of life, that is, human ecology and biohistory. In the early 1970s Stephen initiated and directed the Hong Kong Human Ecology Program, which was the first comprehensive ecological study of a city. He was a UNESCO consultant to the Man in the Biosphere Program (1973-89, and leader of the Fundamental Questions Program at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU (1988-90).

Stephen ‘retired’ from ANU in 1990, and soon after established the Nature and Science Forum in Canberra, with which he continues to be closely involved. This program, involving scientists and lay persons, has achieved a notable record of discussion, publication, and general activism in human ecology and biological sustainability.

Stephen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1999. He lives with his wife Rosie in suburban Canberra but they spend much time at a family farm and wildlife refuge which the family established in the Tinderrys, south–east of Canberra.

Interview abstract: Stephen Vickers Boyden was born in London in 1925. Inspired by a love of nature at the age of five in the south of England, and encouraged by a couple of aunts, he developed strong interests in natural history throughout his school years. At secondary school, Stephen was so disappointed at its constrained attitudes to science (which excluded biology, it being a boys’ school) that the school authorities arranged for him to attend biology classes in a girls’ school. It was an important move for Stephen. He enrolled at the Royal Veterinary College in London, where he graduated five years later. With veterinary science came an enthusiasm for immunology and pathology, which in turn led to enrolment for a PhD at Cambridge University.

Stephen became fascinated by the work of Macfarlane Burnett, then working in Melbourne. Stephen’s supervisor in Cambridge was another Australian, the microbiologist Ian Beveridge, who gave him invaluable advice from the beginning. Stephen’s research focused on bacterial haemagglutination (the clumping of red blood cells caused by bacteria or their products) and the adsorption of antigens onto the surface or red blood cells. He spent part of his postgraduate years working with the eminent French biologist Rene Dubos, at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Dubos became a good personal friend and mentor. At the Rockefeller, Stephen met the Australian Frank Fenner, later to become head of microbiology at John Curtin School of Medicinal Research in ANU. They would meet again a few years later and become lifelong friends. Their common interests in immunology, virology and bacteriology would later widen to encompass the intersection of human biology, ecology, and environmental sustainability.

Stephen took out his PhD at Cambridge in 1951. After a year at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he moved to Copenhagen to help establish the WHO Tuberculosis Immunisation Research Centre. After eight years there, studying cellular and molecular aspects of immunity to tuberculosis, Stephen visited ANU and was impressed by the science being done there, and by the vast open spaces and climatic agreeability of that part of Australia. He acted on this, and in 1960 he was appointed Senior Fellow in Colin Courtice’s department of Experimental Pathology in JCSMR, and was promoted to Professorial Fellow in 1963. In 1966, on the basis of his studies in cellular immunology, and new techniques in cell motility and chemotaxis, Stephen was made a Fellow of the Australian.

After a few years in Canberra, and now with three children, Stephen exercised a dream of living in the Australian bush, within commuting distance of ANU, by building a house on 120 ha of partly cleared bush near Gibraltar Peak in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. After a further two moves, the family developed a working farm, with a natural bush reserve, of 1200 ha in the Tinderry range east of Michelago.

Stephen became increasingly interested in the interplay between human society and the processes of life. He surmised that this interplay is of immense consequence for all humanity. And yet this topic did not feature in any teaching or research program at ANU. In 1965 he decided to change his focus and to work on what he then called ‘Biology and Human Affairs’. He discussed his new inclination with the Vice Chancellor, Len Huxley, and asked to be allowed to remain at ANU in this different capacity. Huxley was sympathetic, and so the Biology and Human Affairs Group came into being. Soon after, it became known as the Human Ecology Group.

In 1970, a human ecology conference held in Hong Kong highlighted the special cultural and socioeconomic features of that city. After a century and more of British rule, the city had accumulated an novel and extensive data base describing trade, population, energy and materials use, infrastructure management and development, financial dynamics, and so on. In short, a rich compendium of urban resources and their interactions in a major, modern and developing metropolis.

With the cooperation of the two major universities in Hong Kong and a number of key staff in CSIRO, and with financial support from the Nuffield Foundation, and later from UNESCO, Stephen and his colleagues at ANU established the Hong Kong Human Ecology Program, the first comprehensive ecological study of a city. The project included an analysis of patterns of flow of energy, water and nutrients in the system, and information was collected on the environments, living conditions and health of the human population. The study gave rise to more than 50 scientific papers and, in 1981, a major book summarising the project. A key conclusion of the project was that the city of Hong Kong, as then structured and functioning, could not be deemed sustainable ecologically in the long term. Since that time somewhat similar research projects have been carried out in other megalopolises around the world, although none as comprehensive as the Hong Kong study.

The Hong Kong study was adopted by UNESCO’s Man in the Biosphere Program as the first project in the human settlements section of the Program.

This was all happening from ANU’s Institute of Advanced Studies. In 1972 Stephen proposed that an undergraduate program be introduced at ANU, to be known as the Human Sciences Program, and offering a series of integrative trans-disciplinary courses on the human condition. Human ecology was to be a major component of this program.

Although there was vehement opposition to this proposal from certain purists in ANU and elsewhere, the Human Sciences Program once established in 1973 then lasted for some 25 years. Its courses were eventually incorporated into what is now the Fenner School of Environment and Society.

In his time (1988-90) before official retirement, Stephen was leader of the Fundamental Questions Program at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at ANU.

Stephen ‘retired’ from ANU in 1990, but continued as an honorary visiting fellow in CRES, continuing to extend his work on contemporary human ecology and biohistory. He also established the Nature and Science Forum in Canberra, with which he has since been closely involved. This program, involving scientists and lay persons, has achieved a notable record of discussion, publication, and general activism in human ecology and sustainability in key natural processes. Its slogan is ‘Healthy People on a Healthy Planet’. The Forum has about a hundred and fifty active members, with an impact greater than its numbers would suggest. Its prominence is evident through its publications, working groups, and website.

Ironically, the Forum lost most of its data base, office records and equipment in a major fire which consumed its premises in the ANU campus at Weston, ACT – part of the disastrous and deadly bush-fire which swept through parts of Canberra and nearby bushland in January 2003. The Forum’s office was then temporarily moved to Weston Public School. It is now located in the Fenner School for Environment and Society at ANU.

In a book published in 2004 Stephen promoted the idea of community ‘life centres’ in which citizens of all ages and backgrounds might work together to learn about the place of humans in nature, and how to act to achieve a healthy and ecologically sustainable society. In 2006, Bob Douglas (featured recently in Emeritus Faculty’s Oral History Program) assembled a round-table to attempt to make this idea a reality. And thus SEE-Change – the acronym alluding to Society, Environment, Economy – came into being. The vision is one of communities creating a sustainable Canberra – to inspire, inform and support action aimed at reducing the city’s ecological footprint. SEE-Change activities range over knowledge-sharing workshops and community events (movie nights, fairs, open house visits), conferences on sustainability, solar-panel bulk buying, bike-trailer hire, and new ways generally to engage citizens and to improve their communities – Healthy People on a Healthy Planet, in action.

And, by no means finally, one must imagine, Stephen has initiated a program aimed at permanently honouring the work of the late Frank Fenner, close friend and exemplar. A working group has been established to plan a Frank Fenner Foundation, partly modelled on the Nature and Society Forum, but on a larger scale.

Away from the ANU and its satellites, Stephen still likes to spend time on his remaining 60 ha block of bush reserve in the Tinderrys. Most of the original farm is now owned by his son-in-law and daughter who maintain a herd of beef cattle and beefalos. The beefalo is an inter-generic fertile hybrid of the domestic beef animal and the North American bison (technically not a buffalo, but widely referred to as such in America). The beefalo is a notably docile animal with low-fat meat and excellent culinary characteristics.

Stephen’s three children, plus a further two from his wife Rosie, and their offspring, mostly live in or near Canberra, and provide great comfort for Stephen and Rosie, who have made their home in Lyons, a suburb of the ACT.

The professional interests of the Boyden children and grandchildren owe much to Stephen’s environmental, ecological and biohistorical inclinations. One might reasonably guess that Stephen’s English aunts, whose influences on Stephen were first voiced 80 or more years ago, would not have been disappointed with their nephew.