John Ashburton Thompson, MD, DPH, MRCS, LRCP, LSA (1846-1915) wrote the first substantial studies of leprosy in Australia. He was born in England but migrated to Australia where, from 1896, he was chief medical officer, president of Board of Health and permanent head of the Health Department in New South Wales. In 1896 he received the National Leprosy Fund prize for his history of leprosy in Australia. In the same year he visited Molokai, Hawaii and wrote Leprosy in Hawaii, in which he systematically recorded the history of the disease in the Hawaiian islands.

International Journal of Leprosy, Centennial Festskrift edition, Vol 41, No 2. 1973.