Jim Angus[44]: Thanks, Ken. It really is a great privilege to be here today to take part in this Witness seminar. I'd only been at the University of Melbourne for six months, back in 1993, and I had previously been the Deputy Director of the Baker Medical Research Institute. So I'd had eighteen privileged years as a full-time researcher. I'd been appointed this young Professor of Pharmacology at Melbourne mainly because my mentor, Sir James Black, back in the U.K. said 'You've had fun doing research. Now it's time to create the next generation of researchers. So you've got to manage research from now on.' So, having been told what I had to do by James Black, in the middle of 1993 as Struan says in his book, he came to meet the new professor having just given a lecture to the third year medical students.[45] He didn't want to get back to CSL in too much of a hurry so we had a cup of coffee and within about ten minutes I was down one floor below showing him a potential laboratory. You might think that's all a bit strange. But I knew a lot about Struan from the media. I also knew that he had a lot to offer, particularly to someone like myself who was a pharmacologist - as venoms had the potential for new drugs.

Figure 9 Jim Angus
Photograph courtesy of Ann Westmore

Just at that time I was working on the one purified peptide from the fish-eating cone snail, Conus geographus, the peptide is GVIA. And we were using it as a very specific blocker of end-type calcium channels to try to understand the role of these end channels in transmission of signals along sympathetic nerve fibres. So I said I'm already interested in venoms. Why don't we get together and collaborate. And so the next ten minutes - having shown him the lab - involved discussions about what we were going to call this unit. And it really was that first discussion. And then twelve months later we had established the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU), begun with a grant of $168,000 from CSL, if you like, so that Struan would get out of their hair. And with a great deal of support from his colleagues at CSL, who we've heard from today. They packed up so many boxes of gear for Struan. I think we paid for the carriage. And across they came and into my department. And within about a week of that time - so we're now 30th of June, 1994 - we had a lab full of gear and Struan. And then came the difficult task of trying to build a critical mass of researchers so that Struan could get on with his very important projects and with being an important information resource for doctors treating envenomation.

But we had to discuss a couple of other things. Because as we had that very first cup of tea he said, 'You know. I have a reputation.' And I said, 'Yes, Struan'. He said, 'I can be difficult'. And I said, 'Well, look. I'm young enough to understand that in my Department I need some older and wiser heads. I need you to help me mentor my young Department.' And he appreciated that. And so we had a very good working relationship. We never yelled at each other once. I said to him, 'All I will ever do is to put in a comma, but it won't be a full stop' to which he said, 'I can write some pretty nasty letters.' And I said, 'Well look, if you're going to write them on the Department of Pharmacology letterhead, let me have a look. I won't tell you not to write them, but I'll just give you my opinion.' That's how it was. And many of them are reproduced in Struan's book, very lively letters to the Minister of Health etc. But that was Struan. I was there to, if you like, help him continue his important work in research and to make sure the resource was there for the rest of Australia. And in Ken, we can carry on Struan's legacy. But they are other matters we can touch on later.

Ken Winkel: I wonder, Jim, if you can enlarge upon Struan's ability, reputation and feedback from students about teaching in his career. Because I think that's a very important part of Struan's legacy.

Jim Angus: I think we got a very good glimpse of that today in the video clip [shown before the seminar]. There he was standing up saying how the funnel web toxin actually worked at the nerve terminal. He was articulate, exciting. He excited the students, because this is a terribly interesting subject. So the students aren't going to go to sleep or start chucking paper darts. But, nevertheless, controlling two hundred and fifty medical students, you have to first of all know what you are talking about. Because otherwise, these intelligent students will just say, "This is not for us. We'd best read it in the text-books." But, of course, Struan was writing the text-books. And it was in his papers that this science was coming. And they also knew that one day in their life as a medico, they would be faced with a life-threatening bite of some description. So he didn't have any trouble.

But he did want to know how good the Professor was at lecturing. So when he arrived on the 30th of June, 1994, to set up his unit he said, "Do you mind, Jim, if I sit in on one of your lectures. In fact, I'd like to sit in on a whole series that you give on the autonomic transmission. Well, the first lecture was an introduction. So he waddled in the back and gave me a wave, and off I went. So the next time we saw each other in the corridor, I said, "What did you think of the lecture." He said, "You can teach. I'm not coming any more." Basically, he wanted to test whether the Professor could communicate to the students. He was always about measurement, and always about making up his own mind. And that was a strength of Struan that we all appreciated.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine