Paul Zimmet has been one of the leading figures, globally, in transforming the understanding and threat of diabetes from a Cinderella disease to a major plank of most governments’ health policies. His science, particularly a series of epidemiological studies, has been at the forefront of the campaign, but it is fueled by his genuine passion to improve the life of people with diabetes. After more than 50 years of working in the diabetes field, he continues to actively push the boundaries of our understanding of the condition.

​

The Zimmet family has medicine running through its veins, but it was not always the somewhat privileged life of the professional classes. Paul Zimmet’s father, Jacob, was born in Tarnopol, Poland, and graduated in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1935. However, with rising anti-Semitism, the only position available to him was an unpaid one at the Tarnopol Hospital. Jacob realized there was no future in Poland, and in 1938, he, along with his wife and first child, Rena, fled Poland and fortunately was able to obtain passage to Australia. Of all the family that remained behind, only one survived the Nazi concentration camps. Australia was far from the horrors of the Holocaust, but life was still not easy, as Jacob had to requalify in medicine, which he achieved at the University of Adelaide in 1942.

​

Paul was born in 1941 and grew up in his father’s country medical practice in Whyalla, a small town nearly 400 km from the city of Adelaide. From such small beginnings, a dynasty of medicine began, as Paul, two of his siblings Rena and Leon, Paul’s two sons Hendrik and Marcel, and Paul’s nephew Adam entered the profession, and between them have specialized in diabetes, cardiology, pediatrics, and cardiac surgery.