Marilyn Renfree

In 1991, Renfree was appointed Chair of Zoology and Head of Department at Melbourne University, a position she held until 2003. She became a Laureate Professor of the University in 2002, and in 2003 was awarded a Federation Fellowship. In 2011, Renfree was one of the lead researchers on the first kangaroo genome sequencing project Renfree currently serves on the Prime Minister's Science Prizes Committee for Australia.

Her two daughters, Tamsin and Kirsten were born in 1983 and 1986. In collaboration with her husband, Renfree studied the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding, showing that breastfeeding on demand had a very effective contraceptive effect. Renfree, in collaboration with David Parer and Liz Parer-Cook, participated in The Nature of Australia, a series by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation celebrating Australia's bicentenary in 1988. Methods used to film tammars were then used to study the birth process in marsupials. Renfree showed that, as for other mammals, prostaglandin is involved in birth and that, as well as for other mammals, the marsupial baby is capable of modifying maternal physiology at birth.

In January 1982, Renfree married Roger Short and they both moved to Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria where she started her third tammar colony. She received a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellowship and was a Principal Research Fellow for ten years at Monash, working full-time on research.

Renfree was awarded the Gottschalk Medal in 1980, the Mueller Medal in 1997. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1997. She was awarded the Gold Conservation Medal of the Zoological Society of San Diego for 2000, the Commonwealth of Australia's Centenary Medal in 2003, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2013 "for distinguished service to biology, particularly through leadership in the research into marsupial reproduction, and to the scientific community". In March 2019 Renfree was awarded the Carl G. Hartmann Award by the Society for the Study of Reproduction and in 2020 the Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture by the Australian Academy of Science. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021.

Prof. Amoroso was very supportive of Renfree's work during her PhD and after. Renfree co-authored a paper "Hormones and the evolution of viviparity" with Amoroso in 1979.

Renfree moved back to Australia to take up a lecturer position in vertebrate biology at Murdoch University, Perth, WA in 1973. Renfree established a colony of tammars at Murdoch University and also started working on agile wallabies, studying them to understand how lactation is controlled in marsupials. She also started working on honey possums, in collaboration with Ron Wooller.

In March 1972, Renfree finished her PhD, worked for six months in Zoology at ANU and then moved to the University of Tennessee to work with Joe Daniel. The project was funded by NIH to study uterine proteins and the influence of melatonin on uterine secretions. While working there, Renfree also started a project on the endocrinology of opossums. To get possums for this work, she advertised in the local newspaper and soon became known as the "possum lady from Australia".

Marilyn Bernice Renfree AO FAA FRS (born 19 April 1947) is an Australian zoologist. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University, was a post-doctoral fellow in Tennessee and then Edinburgh before returning to Australia. Since 1991, Renfree has been Professor of Zoology at the University of Melbourne. Her main research interest focuses on reproductive and developmental biology of marsupials.