A giant of Australian biotech who developed therapies for the world

HUGH DAVID NIALL AO, MD, DMedSci (honoris causa) FRACPAugust 15, 1937 to April 11, 2026

I was six years old and very pleased to have a baby brother when Hugh was born on August 15, 1937, the fourth child and second son of Connie Niall (nee Gorman) and Dr Frank Niall, cardiologist.

I remember Hugh as always determined to do what the older siblings were doing, never to be left behind. And to test things for himself – as when he burnt his hand quite badly after being told not to touch the hot stove in the playroom.

My clearest memory of Hugh as a personality comes from an evening when we older children were sitting in the study reading or doing homework while our father did his phone calls reporting to GPs and checking his public patients with interns at St Vincent’s Hospital.

Hugh was then just about walking and learning to talk – under two or so – and he was bored by being left on the floor with some age-appropriate toys. He staggered to the bookcase, pulled out one of the medical books and dropped it heavily on his father’s knee – saying with the intensity of one learning a new word: “Talk it!″⁣

Hugh learnt to read early, but he liked to be read to, or even better to have his father’s nightly invention of a comic saga involving our neighbours, the Maher family, six kittens and a domesticated giraffe. This was Wild Life in Kew.

When Hugh was choosing his career path in 1954, all the signposts seemed to point to medicine. Frank Niall had died in 1952, aged only 53, at the peak of his career. Hugh, who felt his loss profoundly, knew enough about his father’s work to understand its pleasures and rewards. Frank Niall was a gifted diagnostician and teacher, well known to students at St Vincent’s Hospital, and to the general practitioners who sent patients to his thriving Collins Street practice.

Elsewhere in the family, Hugh had the examples of four uncles and his brother, John, all graduates in medicine. Three cousins including the future pioneer in medical research John Gorman were on their way.

Hugh’s 1954 matriculation results opened other doors. With first-class honours in six subjects and first place in Greek, Latin and calculus and applied mathematics, he was rated “brightest boy in the state” in the newspaper report of the Melbourne University matriculation results. Teachers at Xavier College suggested that he do an arts degree before he decided on medicine.

In later life, he said that his father’s death was a powerful influence, but he didn’t regret taking the traditional path. Medicine opened more doors than classics and it satisfied his cur