Prof. Graeme Clark AO
2001 AwardFounder of the Bionic Ear Graeme Clark pioneered the development of the Bionic ear for deaf children and adults. This was the realization of a dream he had at the age of 10 years due to his experiences with a deaf father. To achieve his goal he left a specialist Ear, Nose and Throat practice in Melbourne in 1966 to study at the University of Sydney how the brain would respond to electrical stimulation for coding sound. He had the opportunity to continue this research when appointed as the Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose and Throat surgery) at the University of Melbourne. This was the first chair in Australasia, and at 34 years of age Graeme was the youngest clinical professor in the country. A clinical trial at Melbourne in 1982 was successful, and as a result this was the signal for the company Cochlear Pty Limited to conduct a worldwide trial for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine whether it would be safe and effective. In 1985 it became the first multiple-channel cochlear implant to be approved by the FDA or any world health regulatory body. This success enabled the Australian company Cochlear Pty Limited to overtake the American simpler single electrode system marketed by 3M, and to achieve 80% to 90% of the world market. Graeme Clark has been acknowledged widely for his work both nationally and internationally. In 1983, He became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to medicine. In 1984 he was the inaugural winner of the BHP Prize for the pursuit of excellence in science and technology. In 1986 he was the Australian Vice-Chancellor's nominee to represent medical research in Australia at the Houston Festival honouring Australia. In 1988 he received the Fletcher award in technical application from the New York League of the Hard of Hearing. In 1992 he was awarded the James Cook medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales for outstanding contributions to science and human welfare in and for the Southern Continent, and the Clunies Ross National Science and Technology award for outstanding contributions to science and technology. In 1994 he was elected an honorary member of the Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, the highest honour the society can bestow, previously awarded to only 19 of the world's most outstanding ear surgeons. In 1997 he received the Sir William Upjohn medal, awarded by the University of Melbourne every four years for distinguished contributions to medical research. In 1998 he was elected to the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technical Science and Engineering. In 1999 he was appointed as Laureate Professor in Otolaryngology under the University of Melbourne's Eminent Scholars Program acknowledging scholarship of the highest international calibre by its academic staff. In 1999 he was awarded the Australia Day Achievers Award, the Victoria Prize for excellence in science and engineering, and a Rio Tinto science hero. In 1999 he was also named a Paul Harris Fellow by The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world. In 2000 he was inducted into the Cavalcade of 11 Scientists from the founding of Australia (the others being William Farrer; Lawrence Hargrave; Thomas Bancroft; Sir Douglas Mawson; Sir Ian Wark; Joseph Pawsey; Allan Synder; Robin Warren & Barry Marshall; Suzanne Corey & Jerry Adams). Graeme Clark: A Profile - Graeme Clark pioneered the development of the Bionic ear for deaf children and adults. This was the realization of a dream he had at the age of 10 years due to his experiences with a deaf father. To achieve his goal he left a specialist Ear, Nose and Throat practice in Melbourne in 1966 to study at the University of Sydney how the brain would respond to electrical stimulation for coding sound. He had the opportunity to continue this research when appointed as the Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose and Throat surgery) at the University of Melbourne. This was the first chair in Australasia, and at 34 years of age Graeme was the youngest clinical professor in the country. - He carried out his early research against opposition from most scientists and clinicians who said that it was not possible to reproduce the complex coding of sound by the brain with a small number of electrode wires in the inner ear, and furthermore it could be dangerous. - Graeme persisted in spite of intense criticism, and built up a team of scientists to see whether the impossible dream could be made a reality. No funding was provided from the national granting bodies as the scientists reviewing the project said it was not worth funding. Graeme raised small sums of money speaking at luncheons organized by Rotary, Lions and Apex. The big breakthrough came when Sir Reginald Ansett, the owner of Channel 0 (now 10), saw a news item where it was reported that the Apex Club of Melbourne had raised $2000 for Graeme Clark's research to bring hearing through artificial electrical stimulation of the inner ear. This gave Sir Reginald the idea to run a telethon to raise the money needed. It meant, however that Graeme and his team had to stand on the city streets of Melbourne shaking tins for passersby to donate to the cause. - Many biological and engineering breakthroughs had to be made to produce the first multiple-electrode implantable Bionic Ear- the first in the world. It was inserted by Graeme Clark and Dr Brian Pyman in a Melbourne patient, Mr Rod Saunders in 1978. At the time no one had been able to give profoundly deaf people the ability to hear running speech by artificially stimulating the hearing nerve with electrical currents. Graeme Clark and his small team made the first real breakthrough in analyzing and coding speech so that Rod could understand what people were saying to him. It was an emotional moment when Rod first heard again. - Having developed a Bionic Ear that could bring speech understanding to deaf people the team was faced with further problems in funding its commercial development as there were no more Nerve Deafness Telethons. However, Graeme Clark was able to convince the Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser and the Australian Government to award a public interest grant for the industrial development of the Bionic Ear. Graeme was a key member of the Commonwealth Steering Committee that selected the Australian pacemaker firm Telectronics to take on its commercial development. He interacted closely with the small engineering tiger team created in the company by its owner Mr Paul Trainor AO. This required giving advice on medical, physiological, biological, safety and marketing issues. The Cochlear Pty Limited implant was produced as a result, and in 1982 Graeme Clark led the surgical team at The Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital that implanted the first Cochlear Pty Limited Bionic Ear in six patients to see whether the industrially developed system would reproduce the results achieved by the University of Melbourne team. - The clinical trial at Melbourne in 1982 was successful, and as a result this was the signal for the company Cochlear Pty Limited to conduct a worldwide trial for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine whether it would be safe and effective. In 1985 it became the first multiple-channel cochlear implant to be approved by the FDA or any world health regulatory body. This success enabled the Australian company Cochlear Pty Limited to overtake the American simpler single electrode system marketed by 3M, and to achieve 80% to 90% of the world market. - The success of the Bionic Ear in adults was the signal for Graeme Clark to implant children who were deafened early in life or born deaf. Cochlear Pty Limited had to re-engineer the Bionic Ear to make it more usable for children, and this was done with help from the University of Melbourne. In 1985 Graeme was the chief surgeon to implant the first multiple channel electrode device in the world in a child at The Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital, and subsequently other children in 1986. A trial on children commenced in Melbourne and was then extended to the United States and Europe as part of a worldwide trial for the FDA. In 1990 it was approved by the FDA for children two years of age and above. It was the first Bionic Ear of any sort to be approved by any world regulatory body. In so doing it became the first major advance in helping profoundly deaf children to communicate since sign language of the deaf was first developed 200 years ago at the Paris Deaf School. - In 1985 Graeme Clark negotiated with the Victorian Government and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital to establish the first public hospital-based Cochlear Implant Clinic in the world. This became the alpha test clinic for new devices from Cochlear Pty Limited and is the audiological center for Cochlear Limited's world services. - The work of the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital Cochlear Implant Clinic showed that children obtained better speech understanding the younger their age at surgery. However, before implanting children under 2 years Graeme Clark as the Principal Investigator on a 5 year US government National Institutes of Health (NIH) contract resolved the special safety concerns, such as middle ear infection, in this age group. These were the key studies paving the way for operations around the world on very young children even as young as 6 months. These young children are doing very well, and a majority attend mainstream schools. A large economic saving to the community is one result and enabling deaf children to compete in a hearing world is another. - Although the results on the first adult patients were very encouraging Graeme Clark was not content to rest until people were able to understand speech easily and without even the need for lip reading assistance. They would then be enabled to talk on the phone and one day hear music. For this reason he pursued speech research, and he and colleagues were able to make further major breakthroughs in the processing of speech, so that now profoundly deaf people can hear with a Bionic Ear better than severely deaf people can with some residual hearing and a hearing aid. All the main research advances that have ensured that Cochlear Limited maintain its position as the world leader have emanated from the research team led by Graeme Clark. - The Australian company Cochlear Limited has been in operation for 21 years and has 70% of the world market. Over 30,000 children and adults in 70 countries have received the cochlear implant. The company, now listed on the stock exchange, is one of the recommended ethical investments, and is in the top 100 Australian companies on the basis of capitalization. - Working closely with PhD student Field Rickards, Graeme Clark has also played a role in developing the best means of recording brain waves from electrodes on the scalp to detect a hearing loss in new born children. As a result effective treatment with hearing aids or a Bionic Ear can be carried out in these children. - From 1970 to 1973 Graeme Clark was instrumental in establishing the first University training in Audiology in Australia, situated in the Ear Nose and Throat Department at the University of Melbourne. This course has trained the greatest number of Audiologists for the medical management of deafness in Australia. They play a key role in the delivery of Cochlear's support to clinics around the world. - In 1970 Graeme Clark chaired the committee that established the Deafness Foundation of Victoria. This brought together all the schools and other bodies involved in the management of deaf children and adults. For the first time these organizations had a unified voice and a political forum. From this arose a national body the Australian Deafness Council. - From 1975 to 1980 Graeme was chairman of the Consultative Council for Maternal and Child health to the Minister of Health of the Victorian Government. During his chairmanship a number of important issues were addressed including the rubella immunization program to prevent deafness and other deformities. - Graeme has been the keynote speaker on cochlear implants at International Conferences throughout the world, and organized three international conferences in Australia on cochlear implants. He has been host and lectured to hundreds of leading surgeons, audiologists, educators and scientists from around the world over the last 30 years. In 1999 he gave the prestigious Toynbee Lecture in London for the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the first time an Australian has ever been asked to give this lecture in recognition of his services to otology (ear disease). Then in 2001 he gave the Graham Fraser Memorial Lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine in London-the first Australian to give this lecture. He has been invited to be the Guest of Honour at the 7th International Cochlear Implant Conference in 2002 in Manchester. - Graeme Clark continues to push forward the frontiers in helping deaf people. In 1985 he founded the Bionic Ear Institute and is its research director. Graeme is currently leading a team to study how to use brain-derived proteins to cause the hearing nerve and the inner ear to regenerate, so that one day people with sensory or neural hearing loss may not even need a Bionic Ear, and a hearing loss could be prevented. This could be as major an advance as the development of the Bionic Ear. He is also leading the collaborative project with Telstra to determine how computer simulations of brain function may produce much improved methods for humans to communicate with machines such as robots. - The Bionic Ear Institute has over the years received official visits from several heads of state: Her Majesty Queen Beatrix and His Royal Highness Prince Claus of the Netherlands on 31 October, 1988; Their Imperial Highnesses Prince and Princess Akishino from Japan on 12 October, 1995; His Excellency, Mr. Jiang Zemin, President of the People's Republic of China on 7 September, 1999; The Hon John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, 11 February, 2000; Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on 23 March, 2000. - Graeme Clark has been acknowledged widely for his work both nationally and internationally. He became in 1983 an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to medicine. In 1984 he was the inaugural winner of the BHP Prize for the pursuit of excellence in science and technology. In 1986 he was the Australian Vice-Chancellor's nominee to represent medical research in Australia at the Houston Festival honouring Australia. In 1988 he received the Fletcher award in technical application from the New York League of the Hard of Hearing. In 1992 he was awarded the James Cook medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales for outstanding contributions to science and human welfare in and for the Southern Continent, and the Clunies Ross National Science and Technology award for outstanding contributions to science and technology. In 1994 he was elected an honorary member of the Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, the highest honour the society can bestow, previously awarded to only 19 of the world's most outstanding ear surgeons. In 1997 he received the Sir William Upjohn medal, awarded by the University of Melbourne every four years for distinguished contributions to medical research. In 1998 he was elected to the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technical Science and Engineering. In 1999 he was appointed as Laureate Professor in Otolaryngology under the University of Melbourne's Eminent Scholars Program acknowledging scholarship of the highest international calibre by its academic staff. In 1999 he was awarded the Australia Day Achievers Award, the Victoria Prize for excellence in science and engineering, and a Rio Tinto science hero. In 1999 he was also named a Paul Harris Fellow by The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world. In 2000 he was inducted into the Cavalcade of 11 Scientists from the founding of Australia (the others being William Farrer; Lawrence Hargrave; Thomas Bancroft; Sir Douglas Mawson; Sir Ian Wark; Joseph Pawsey; Allan Synder; Robin Warren & Barry Marshall; Suzanne Corey & Jerry Adams). - Tributes have come from leading scientists in Australia and overseas. These have included ones from Professor Sir Gustav Nossal AC, Professor David Pennington AC, Professor Emeritus Sir Macfarlane Burnett, AK, Professor I Ward AO, Professor Alan Gilbert, Professor Ernst Lehnhardt, and Professor Bobby Alford. Testimonial from Professor Sir Gustav Nossal AC in launching Graeme Clark's autobiography Sounds from Silence in 2000. For your achievements Graeme, we honour you, for your steadfastness and generosity, we salute you, for your courage in sharing your life with us, so transparently and so totally we thank you. Testimonial from Professor David Penington AC Chairman of Cochlear Limited given at the Bionic Ear Institute dinner 2001 If you look in the Medical Melbourne exhibition you will see two quotations up on one side there. One is from a Nobel Prize winner Hungarian Szent-Gyorgyi a physiologist. He said discovering is seeing what everybody sees but thinking what nobody else thinks. Graeme Clark was like that when he saw what everybody thought was impossible and he was determined to do it. Albert Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge; knowledge is limited, imagination spans the world. Graeme had the capacity to think beyond what anybody else was willing to think and the determination to achieve what led to the development of the multi-channel implant, the first trials in a patient whilst it was still under development in the University and then the move with Government support into commercialization with Paul Trainor a venture capitalist in Sydney who had already gone into the business of producing cardiac pacemakers. Testimonial from Professor Emeritus Sir Macfarlane Burnet, A.K., O.M., K.B.E., M.D., PhD., Lond., F.A.A., F.R.S. Nobel laureate (Physiology & Medicine) - the first patron of the Bionic Ear Institute in 1985. I have been very impressed by the emergence of the bionic ear as a practical proposition, but even more by the promise for the future that it seems to embody. It makes use of the arrangement in the cochlea for pitch recognition to bring electronic technology into direct functional relationship with the nervous system and the human consciousness. Maybe that unique relationship has no other parallel in the nervous system, and thus that direct link between electronics and physiology will find no other application to medicine. Nevertheless, I feel it may represent a new benchmark in the understanding of neural and mental function in terms of their physical components. Perhaps the work will not reach such a climax for centuries, but whatever may eventuate special credit will be made to Professor Clark and his colleagues for their pioneering and successful work. Testimonial from Professor J M Ward AO, Vice-Chancellor and Principal The University of Sydney, on the award of an Honorary Doctorate of Medicine 1989 "Mr Chancellor I have the honour to present Professor Graeme Milbourne Clark AO for the conferring of the degree of Doctor of Medicine honoris causa. Graeme Clark needs no introduction to the 15,000 totally deaf people who can now hear again because of his research and development of the multielectrode cochlear implant or bionic ear. The development of which the whole of Australia can be justly proud of. The cochlear implant is the work of Graeme Clark that has been commercially developed in Sydney by the Nucleus group and is now exported throughout the world. It is acknowledged currently as the leading device and the standard against which future developments are judged. Graeme Clark undertook his research mainly at the University of Melbourne but the University of Sydney has also played a major role in his career." Testimonial from Professor Alan Gilbert Vice-Chancellor The University of Melbourne on the award of the Upjohn Medal 1997. "Professor Graeme Clark has made a most significant contribution to medicine in Australia and throughout the world. His distinguished service in medical research to alleviate the devastating effects of deafness through the cochlear implant is truly remarkable. His research team has led the field for over twenty years and ensured that Australia has developed and retained a leading position in this area of research and in the clinical application of the cochlear implant. Graeme Clark's considerable contribution is not limited to cochlear implants alone he has contributed key ideas in the development of the novel frequencies specific to this hearing test device SSEP and the development of electro-tactile hearing aid Tickle-Talker and also a combined cochlear implant and hearing aid, Combionic aid. Graeme Clark has also been a champion of deaf people particularly children. His dream has always been that deaf people should not be disadvantaged by the handicap. His early work in the 1970s to help to establish key groups such as the Deafness Foundation to improve the understanding of hearing loss and actively work towards integration of deaf people into the hearing world testifies to his commitment to his dream." Testimonial from Professor Bobby R Alford Distinguished Service Professor and Executive Vice-President and Dean of Medicine Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas to the Australian Academy of Science in 1999. I have known and admired Graeme for 30 years. He is recognized worldwide as a scholar and a superb teacher and communicator and an outstanding physician and scientist. His contributions to the neurophysiology of hearing and the understanding of deafness and the development of the cochlear implant and its subsequent acceptance and clinical application are of monumental importance. He is truly regarded as pre-eminent in his field. Testimonial from Professor Dr Ernst Lehnhardt Medizische Hochschule Hannover Germany at the ceremony in 1988 awarding Professor Graeme Clark an honorary doctorate in medicine. For me as well as your other scholars there is no doubt whatsoever that you are the mentor of the cochlear implant development whether this is in the past, present or future. You succeeded not only because of your excellent and broad scientific background, but even more so based on your special sensitivity for human feelings. You did not see your patients from the distance of a cool scientist, but met them with the warmth of a medical doctor. You resisted the temptation of enjoying a success that would have been premature. You remained cautious controlling the results again and again and searching for improvements. You have the skills to transfer your enthusiasm to your team. You made the public listen to you and created interest amongst potential sponsors and Government institutions. You have even succeeded in winning the industry for your project. These are talents you as a pioneer of a new scientific branch had to dispose of should your findings be applied broadly surgical medicine.
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