The School of Anatomy & Human Biology formally began in 1956 with the appointment of the foundation professor of anatomy, David Sinclair. Its primary purpose was the teaching of anatomy and histology to medical students, and this was subsequently extended to include dental students.

From a modest staff complement of around 9 in 1959-60, we now have a total number of academic, support and research staff of around 50 with 19 Honours students in 2004 and 45 Postgraduates  -  a quite large school in the University.  In addition to these numbers are many casual teaching staff.

Today, the teaching of medical and dental students constitutes about 30% of the Schools undergraduate teaching, while the majority focusses on anatomy and human biology units, primarily for Science students. This second theme in the School was clearly in the minds of those who conceived it because a physical anthropologist was part of the original plan. However, although Professor David Allbrook, Sinclair's successor appointed in 1965, had a strong interest in this discipline, it wasn't until the arrival of Dr Len Freedman in 1970 that a formally-trained appointment in this area was made.

Physical anthropology quickly evolved into Human Biology and the success of this discipline is exemplified by the change in name of the School during the 1970's. Anatomy in its broadest sense and Human Biology are two highly complementary and integrated disciplines. They are also synergistic and remain at the core of the School's activities and welfare, and provide the foundation for our nexus between teaching and research.

In the Western world, virtually all medical/dental anatomy Schools that did not develop a strong complementary scientific facet have either closed or exist in a depleted state. Against this strong trend, anatomy at UWA is an energetic discipline as exemplified, for example, by the development of the Clinical Training and Education Centre (CTEC). The School was largely instrumental in the planning and construction of this complex.  This is a facility for the training of surgeons and others in the medical or allied health professions in the latest surgical and medical techniques. The facility is physically linked to this School and was opened on April 1st, 2000, by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

In the USA, UK and Europe, human biology (often referred to by other titles, especially biological anthropology) is a substantive, vibrant and expanding discipline. However, within the Australian context, we are the only university School with a substantial and comprehensive human biology programme of research and teaching.

This inherent diversity is the real strength of the School.

The School's intellectual interests can, for heuristic purposes, be grouped into three components:

• gross structure & function
• cell & molecular biology
• whole organism biology
  

These groupings can be seen in both our teaching and research activities. For each member of staff, their activities, both teaching and research, range across at least two of these three groups.

The School has strength in the areas of:

• Reproductive biology & endocrinology
• Neurobiology and ocular biology
• Cell and tissue regeneration & transplantation
• Histology
• Evolutionary biology & biological anthropology
• Computer imaging & biological modelling

During 1996-7, the School's building had a third floor added and some refurbishment of the existing two floors was undertaken, to ease what was a critical shortage of space. During the two year building phase, virtually the entire School had to be moved to the Park Avenue building adjacent to King's Park (affectionately referred to as "Old Zoology" at the time).  Within 12 months of returning to its building, another major construction phase began, prompted by the ctec development, but including the demolition of our dissection room; this disruption continued into early 2000. While there was no net gain of space the development inproved the quality of our dissection area. From a teaching perspective, the main spaces are a dedicated dissection room, a large multipurpose lab, a resource centre for self-directed learning, three tutorial rooms and a third year Science teaching laboratory. All members of the academic staff have a research laboratory, albeit in some cases shared.  There is a large general-purpose molecular biology lab and two tissue culture labs.

The School has a long history of egalitarian, collegial decision making processes and our governance processes were formalized in writing in 1996. In practical terms, however, they had been in place for several decades.

Some of the challenges we face we share with virtually all university schools while others are unique, a consequence of our history, what we now are and where we hope to be in the future.