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Roger V Short
Professor Roger Short is an Anglo-Scottish-Australian. Educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and then at the University of Bristol where he completed his Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree in 1954, he did a Masters in Genetics at the University of Wisconsin whilst on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1954-55, and then did a Ph.D. in the Veterinary School at the University of Cambridge from 1956-58. He stayed on in Cambridge until 1972, becoming a Reader in Reproductive Biology in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and a member of the Agricultural Research Council Unit of Reproductive Physiology and Biochemistry, and a Fellow of Magdalene College. In 1972 he was appointed Foundation Director of the Medical Research Council Unit of Reproductive Biology in Edinburgh, and Honorary Professor in the University of Edinburgh. In 1982 he was appointed to a Personal Chair in Reproductive Biology at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and in 1996 he moved to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the University of Melbourne. In 2006, he took up his present appointment as Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Professor Short is co-editor, with Professor C.R. Austin, and the main contributor to a series of Cambridge University Press textbooks entitled “Reproduction in Mammals”. The first eight volumes were published between 1972 and 1980, sold over 100,000 copies, and were translated into German, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Arabic and Japanese. A completely rewritten and expanded Second Edition of five volumes was published between 1982 and 1986 and is still in print. One of Professor Short’s hobbies is the History of Science, with particular relevance to reproductive biology. He has made a film of William Harvey’s classical study “De Generatione Animalium” (1652), and another one on John Hunter’s experiments on antler growth in deer.
Professor Short has published over 350 scientific papers in a wide variety of scientific journals, and in 1999 he published, with Dr Malcolm Potts, the Bixby Professor of Population Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, a book called “Ever Since Adam and Eve: the Evolution of Human Sexuality” (Cambridge University Press). It has been widely acclaimed, has already been reprinted, and has been published in Spanish, Italian, Korean and Chinese.
One of Professor Short’s major research interests has been the evolution of human reproduction. He has shed new light on the causes of the current human population explosion, and has been actively involved in contraceptive research and development for the past two decades. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Family Health International (FHI) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina from 1983-1990, and retired from the Board in 1997. Family Health International is one of the world’s largest non-governmental, not-for-profit organisations dedicated to the provision of family planning services for developing countries. From 1996 to 2000 he was on the Population Panel of the Wellcome Trust.
In 2001 he spent two and a half months as Regent’s Professor at the University of California, and is currently Andrew White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. He is a Visiting Fellow of Green College, Oxford University. He holds US and EEC patents for the use of melatonin to control jet lag, which have been licensed to Eli Lilly via the Melbourne company, Circadian Technologies.
Professor Short spent the whole of 1989 working as a consultant to the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organisation in Geneva, where he was involved in designing strategies for the integration of HIV prevention and family planning programmes. He has pioneered an innovative sex education campaign in Monash University which is now running very successfully in a number of universities in Beijing and Shanghai. His current research interests include the way in which male circumcision protects against HIV infection, and the development of new ways to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV in men and women. Intra vaginal lemon juice, once widely used as a contraceptive, might prove to be a natural microbicide, since it can kill HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in culture. Clinical trials are in progress in the Department of Obstetrics, University of Jos, Nigeria. All the details are on the website, www.aids.net.au.
Very recently, he read James Lovelock’s profoundly disturbing new book, “The Revenge of Gaia” (Penguin, 2006), which describes the drastic consequences we will face if the human population continues to increase beyond our current 6.5 billion. Since we are the ultimate cause of climate change, is contraception our last line of defence against global warming.
CURRICULUM VITAE - Roger V Short
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