Professor John Carew Eccles was born on 27 January 1903 in Melbourne, Victoria. He was awarded MBBS, University of Melbourne 1925; BA, Oxford University 1927; MA, DPhil, Oxford University 1929; and was Scholar at Oxford University 1932-1937 and in Electrophysiology, University of Sydney 1937-1944. Eccles was Professor in Physiology, University of Otago 1944-1951 before joining the Australian National University as founding Professor in the Department of Physiology, John Curtin School of Medical Research 1951-1966. In 1963 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine (with Alan L Hodgkin and Andrew F Huxley). After his role as Professor and Head of Physiology at ANU, Professor Eccles took up an appointment as Professor in Neurophysiology at the Institute of Biomedical Research 1966-1968 and as Professor in Neurobiology, State University of New York 1968-1997. Eccles died on 2 May 1997 in Contra, Switzerland.

Peter Orlebar Bishop was born on 14 June 1917 at Tamworth, New South Wales. Bishop was Senior Lecturer, Department of Physiology, University of Sydney 1951-54; Reader in Physiology 1954-55, Professor of Physiology and Head of Department of Physiology 1955-67. From 1967-82 Bishop was Professor and Head of Department of Physiology, at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University. Bishop retired at the end of 1982, though for two years after his retirement he worked as a visiting fellow in the Australian National University's Research School of Biological Sciences.