Millions of women across the world will ultimately have cause to thank the 2006 Australian of the Year.
Professor Ian Frazer has spent almost two decades developing a vaccine against a sexually-transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer.
Human papilloma virus (HPV) is known to cause around 70 per cent of the world's 470,000 known new cervical cancer cases each year.
Around 230,000 women die from the cancer annually and roughly 300 of them are Australian.
On Wednesday night, the Scottish-born Queenslander who has worked most of his adult life to turn those figures around, became Australia's newest ambassador-at-large.
Prof Frazer received the Australian of the Year accolade at a ceremony on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra.
He would like other Australians to "catch his disease" and dedicate their lives to work that helps others.
"You can do a great deal of good for others and it will make you feel really good yourself," he told reporters after the ceremony.
After moving to Australia in the early 1980s, Prof Frazer went on to found the University of Queensland's Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research.
Years of clinical trials involving tens of thousands of women across the globe will see his vaccine on the market by the end of the year.
Prime Minister John Howard, who presented Prof Frazer with his award, said he would talk to Health Minister Tony Abbott about making the vaccine available to young women across Australia.
"We are looking at the implications of that and I expect to be talking to Mr Abbott about it quite soon," Mr Howard told reporters.
"Whatever can be done to speed its availability in a proper clinical way will be done," he said.
Prof Frazer said the vaccine would ultimately be able to eradicate cervical cancer.
"A vaccine to eliminate a disease which kills a significant number of women world-wide every year really has to be used," he said.
The clinical immunologist was chosen from a league of other accomplished men, including High Court judge Michael Kirby, social commentator and Baptist minister Reverend Tim Costello, and Tasmanian food labelling activist Richard Bovill.
Also nominated were South Australian trauma specialist Dr Bill Griggs, historian Geoffrey Bolton from Western Australia, Canberran pianist, harpsichordist and conductor Geoffrey Lancaster, and Northern Territory botanist Peter Fannin.
The 2005 Australian of the Year, Fiona Wood, has relinquished the title.
A burns specialist at the Royal Perth Hospital, the mother-of-six shot to fame in 2002 with her treatment of badly burned victims of the Bali bombings.
The work of health professionals was the theme of this year's awards.
Australia's Local Hero for 2006 is whistleblower nurse Toni Hoffman who exposed the now-notorious "Dr Death" two years ago.
The first indigenous nurse ever to qualify to practice in NSW was named the Senior Australian of the Year.
Sally Goold, now a Queenslander, founded the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses, which works to increase the number of indigenous people in her profession.
The Young Australian of the Year, meanwhile, lost her husband in the devastating east Asian tsunami.
Trisha Broadbridge and her husband Victorian footballer Troy Broadbridge were honeymooning on Phi Phi Island in Thailand on December 26, 2004 when the tsunami hit.
The 24-year-old works with young people through The Reach Foundation to improve their self-esteem and founded the Reach Broadbridge Fund in honour of her husband.
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