Sir William Ian Clunies Ross CMG (22 February 189920 June 1959) was an Australian veterinary scientist. He has been described as the 'architect' of Australia's scientific boom, for his stewardship of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian scientific organisation. Family Ian Clunies Ross was born in Bathurst, New South Wales on 22 February 1899. His grandfather, Robert Clunies Ross, was a brother of John Clunies-Ross who settled with his family and crew on Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1826-7 and proclaimed a kingdom. He married Janet Leslie Carter on 6 October 1927, in Sydney, Australia. The couple had three sons, Anthony, Adrian and David. Education Clunies Ross was educated at Newington College (1912–1916) and in 1917 he entered the University of Sydney, in the Agriculture Faculty, and transferred to Veterinary Science at the beginning of 1918, graduating with second class honours in 1920. His father passed away in 1914, and his brothers Egerton and Rob Clunies Ross died in WWI, killed in action and from pneumonic influenza respectively. Veterinary career In 1921, Clunies Ross was given a temporary lectureship in veterinary anatomy, the following year he was made a Fellow of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, allowing him to a travel overseas. He spent a year working on animal parasites at the Molteno Institute for Research in Parasitology in Cambridge and the School of Tropical Medicine in London. He also spent time in the United States, mainly in Texas and Louisiana, where he looked at methods of field control of parasitic diseases. When he returned to Sydney he set up a veterinary practice, lectured at the University and continued his own research on hydatid parasite (Echinococcus granulosus), the liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica), and the dog-tick (Ixodes holocyclus). He developed an immunization for dogs to protect against the dog-tick. CSIR In 1926 Clunies Ross was appointed parasitologist to the newly established Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and was funded to continue research at the Sydney University Veterinary School. On 6 October 1927, Ian married English Honours graduate Janet Carter at the Catholic Apostolic Church, Redfern. They had three sons: Anthony, Adrian and David. By mid-1931, three other researchers were working with him, and in November 1931 the team moved into CSIR's new McMaster Animal Health Laboratory, Clunies Ross was appointed as the Officer-in-Charge of the laboratory. In 1928, his thesis on the