Ben Haneman

The Ben Haneman Memorial Student Prize was awarded annually by the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine (ANZSHM) for the best student research essay in the history of medicine. In 2018 the Prize was discontinued in order to bolster the Ben Haneman Memorial Postgraduate Student Conference Grants, a travel grants programme.

He died on 18 December 2001 in Darlinghurst, New South Wales following a fall the day before in the State Library. He was survived by his two sons, his two daughters-in-law and his four grandchildren.

He had a passion for Spain that dated from his early years when he had learned to speak Spanish, and over a period of 30 years he collected 1,100 copies of Miguel de Cervantes' literary masterpiece Don Quixote in 39 languages, both in the original Spanish and in "every ... significant English translation", as well as a number of illustrated editions of the novel, together with another thousand works on Cervantes. Haneman described what Don Quixote meant to him in the following words: "Don Quixote is central to Spanish literature, to world literature, to writing, production and reading of books and, in my fevered belief, is central to living and being." In 1997 he donated his Cervantes collection to the State Library of New South Wales where is it currently displayed on bookshelves lining the walls of the Library's Friends Room.

The family migrated to Australia when he was four. He attended Canterbury Boys' High School and then the University of Sydney where he graduated in medicine. Having received his medical registration in 1944, he began working as a general practitioner in the Sydney suburb of Carlton. Fifteen years later he passed the Royal Australasian College of Physicians examination and became a consultant doctor specialising in gastroenterology at St. George Hospital in Kogarah. He later became warden in clinical studies at the same hospital and was a "mentor" to generations of medical students. In 1971 he became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He was a long-time member of the Doctors Reform Society of Australia.

Ben Haneman AM, FRACP (13 February 1923 – 18 December 2001) was an Australian physician and book collector.

Ben Haneman was born Benedetto Haneman in Florence, Italy on 13 February 1923. His parents were Nathan and Amulka Haneman.