Drs Alan and Elizabeth Finkel at the opening of the Finkel Theatre in Canberra.
Credit: JCSMR
It was on an early morning jog that Dr Alan Finkel caught his first glimpse of the new building that would house a lecture theatre named for his family.
“The sun was just rising and as I ran down Garran Road I saw this great edifice glinting in the light. I had no idea what it was. As I went past, ‘John Curtin School of Medical Research’ emerged from the wall and I thought ‘Wow, that’s impressive’.”
On that day, Finkel did not reveal his presence to his alma mater, content to appreciate the building anonymously and prepare for the day he would open the high-tech theatre within it in his family name.
A philanthropist, entrepreneur and one-time postdoctoral researcher at The John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR), Finkel and his wife Elizabeth cut the ribbon for the opening of the Finkel Theatre in October. Watching on was his mother, one of his two sons, his former supervisor Professor Steve Redman and a crowd of medical researchers whose work has been revolutionised by his designs.
Finkel completed an electrical engineering degree at Monash University, and arrived in Canberra and the neuroscience division at JCSMR for a postdoctoral research position in 1981.
“From the very beginning I knew I was dealing with a human dynamo,” recalls Redman, the head of the Memory and Movement Lab.
Redman realised his student was more interested in instrumentation than the biology of the brain. So in 1981, Finkel’s energies were focused on a problem that had been challenging neurologists studying the mammalian nervous system – there was just no adequate way to measure and record the electrical impulses of nerve cells.
Scientists had been using what was known as a voltage clamp of two electrodes (one to measure volts, the other amps) to study much larger nerve cells of other animals, such as amphibians, but two electrodes were not fine enough to measure the activity of smaller nerve cells of mammals.
Although Finkel confesses to spending much time during his time at JCSMR in the tea room, his time there must have been spent productively because by 1982 he had developed the solution.
“Alan’s great achievement was to build an amplifier that measured nerve activity in mammalian neurons with one electrode,” Redman says. “He made his first measurements of synaptic currents in 1982 and a paper on the results was published later that year.”
This watershed was to set Finkel on a new path in life, far from the labs of JCSMR. Inundated with questions about and requests for the single electrode voltage clamp, in 1983 he started his company, Axon Instruments (an axon is the part of the nerve cell which conducts the impulses). At the time, Elizabeth had secured a post-doctoral position in California, and this is where Finkel set-up production of the first commercial Axon amplifiers.
For a young scientist, it was a big step, Finkel recalls.
“But what I had going for me when I moved overseas was an Australian PhD. It usually is – and was for me – a process of being thrown into the deep end of a very deep pool and learning to use your own resources to keep afloat. That helped me go into a new country and take a chance on starting up a new business.”
Axon Instruments grew in the US, eventually employing nearly 150 people developing medical research equipment and software. Today it would be a rare sight not to spot an Axon instrument in every electrophysiology lab across the world, Redman says.
In 2000, Axon Instruments listed on the Australian stock exchange. It was a bumpy ride for the fledgling public company, but eventually it was attractive enough to investors and in 2004 it was bought out by US firm Molecular Devices Corporation. Finkel continues to play an active role in the company.
Since then, the Finkel family has continued to contribute to scientific endeavour in Australia in a number of ways through the Finkel Foundation. There is the science magazine COSMOS, the Australian Course in Advanced Neuroscience which takes place every year at North Stradbroke Island, the annual Finkel Prize at JCSMR and now the Finkel Theatre.
“My time at The John Curtin School of Medical Research remains an important part of my life,” Finkel said at the opening of the Finkel Theatre. “Axon developed here, and it’s been pretty successful. I wanted to take some of that success and contribute to the John Curtin School.”
At the opening of the Finkel Theatre, he paid thanks to the crucial work of the mechanical workshop of JCSMR. “What made my time here so wonderful was the resource of the mechanical workshop.
“Most new research comes from new instruments and I still remember the resources and support I got from them when I was here. I’m really pleased to see the enormous space dedicated to the new workshop which I’m sure will continue to contribute to help scientists make important international progress.”
