1956-2012: 57 years of continuous service to microbiology in New Zealand

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Melville (Rush) Rush-Munro FNZIMLT Elected to Honorary Membership: 1982

F. Melville Rush-Munro (Rush) began his medical laboratory science career during WW2 as an RNZAF "medical orderly, special duties laboratory" at the Wallace laboratory of the Auckland Public Hospital. He spent the next few years in NZ and the Pacific islands working on haematology, bacteriology and parasitology. About 1950 he was asked to establish the Mycology Unit at Auckland Hospital which he did, and he remained there until 1954 when he left to join a private medical laboratory in Auckland to take charge of bacteriology. At the same time he built up the standing of mycology there and finally established a separate mycology unit, which was to become the largest in NZ. He also did much reference work and taught laboratory trainees and medical students. He was made a Fellow of The NZ Institute of Medical Laboratory Technology in 1968. After overseas visits to the Pasteur Institute and Wuerzburg, he returned to NZ in 1974 and was appointed mycologist at the Mycology Reference Laboratory at NHI. He also contributed to the teaching of mycology through his annual training courses at Massey University. He received an Australasian Federation for Medical and Veterinary Mycology award for meritorious contributions to medical and veterinary mycology at the 1994 ISHAM Conference in Adelaide. He was a regular contributor to NZMS conferences and has authored or co-authored some 30 scientific papers Rush was made an Honorary Member of NZMS in 1982.

 

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