Bruce Holloway

Bruce Holloway

Emeritus Professor

PhD, California Institute of Technology
DSc, University of Melbourne

As a young scientist Bruce received a BSc (Hons) from the University of Adelaide in 1948. He completed some of his honours research at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in South Australia and, after graduating, returned as a lecturer in plant pathology from 1949 to 1950. In 1950 he moved to  the USA and studied at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) in the Division of Biology – a division that had featured the likes of Thomas Hunt Morgan, Alfred Sturtevant, George Beadle and Linus Pauling.  At CalTech he was awarded a PhD in 1953.

Professor Holloway returned to Australia and worked as a research fellow in microbial genetics at the John Curtin School of Medical Research until 1956. He moved to the University of Melbourne from 1957 to 1968 where he was a Senior Lecturer in bacteriology (1957–60) and then Reader in microbial  genetics (1961-1968). He was awarded a DSc from the University of Melbourne in 1966.

After establishing the Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology in 1968, Professor Holloway continued to build the reputation of genetics at Monash by encouraging international collaborations and continuing with his own research into the genetics of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  His willingness to share his Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain (PA01) throughout the research community  has led to it being the most widely used Pseudomonas strain in research today and the first Pseudomonas strain to have its  genome sequenced.