 In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, with Carol W. Greider.For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Greider and Jack W. Szostak, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate.She also worked in medical ethics, and was controversially dismissed from the Bush Administration's President's Council on Bioethics.