Professor Robert Webster - author of Flu Hunter

Balclutha-born Professor Robert Webster is a world-renowned virologist and international expert in influenza who was among the first scientists to acknowledge a link between human and avian flu. His team isolated and identified the avian-adapted strain of H5N1, the causative agent of H5N1 flu commonly known as avian influenza or 'bird flu'. For the past few decades he has worked in infectious diseases at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He has published over 600 original articles and reviews on influenza viruses, and in his eighties still travels the world addressing conferences and scientific gatherings. Professor Webster's latest book is Flu Hunter: Unlocking the Secrets of a Virus, which examines the deadly 1918 Spanish flu virus.