Robin Warren's 2005 Nobel Prize another honour for Adelaide's Verco wider family medical dynasty

Robin Warren's background is steeped in South Australian history on both sides of his family.

J. Robin Warren shared being a graduate of St Peter’s College and Adelaide University with two other South Australian Nobel laureates: Lawrence Bragg and Howard Florey.

Warren has an intrinsically South Australian heritage.

The Warrens arrived from Aberdeen in 1840. Great grandfather John Campbell Warren was involved in local government, a Light Cavalry captain, owned an Adelaide Hills estate, and was father of 16. He sent his sons to work in the outback, including Anna Creek cattle station. Warren’s father Roger became one of the Australia’s leading winemakers.

His mother’s family arrived with the first settlers in 1836-37. From them came the famous Verco dynasty of Adelaide doctors.  Robin Warren’s 2005 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine was a fitting tribute to that tradition.

Robin Warren trained at Royal Adelaide Hospital (where one of the wards was called Verco after an uncle of his mother) and became registrar at the Institute of Veterinary Science working in laboratory haematology.

In 1963, Warren was appointed honorary clinical assistant in pathology and honorary registrar in haematology at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

He lectured in pathology at Adelaide University, before becoming clinical pathology registrar at Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Elected to the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia in 1967, he became senior pathologist at Royal Perth Hospital.

At the University of Western Australia, Warren and fellow Nobel laureate Barry Marshall proved the bacterium helicobacter pylori was the cause of stomach ulcers.
This led to the 2005 Nobel Prize for medicine.