Our history
Named after one of New Zealand's most eminent medical scientists, Sir Graham 'Mont' Liggins, the Liggins Institute was the University of Auckland’s first large-scale research institute.
History of the Liggins Institute
Watch this video, featuring interviews with Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, Distinguished Professor Jane Harding and Professor Wayne Cutfield, to get an insight into how we began.
Our foundations
The Liggins Institute was established in 2001 by Professor Peter Gluckman and his fellow founding directors, Professors Murray Mitchell, Stewart Gilmour and Jane Harding, to establish a centre for internationally recognised research in developmental biology and its application to improving human health.
This brought together a cluster of internationally recognised scientists already working on related research within the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.
The founding directors were subsequently joined by leading scientists from New Zealand and overseas to form a critical mass of researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines.
Together they bring multi-disciplinary approaches to investigating important health issues in ways that will translate discoveries in basic sciences into strategies to improve the health of individuals and whole populations.
The Liggins legacy - Professor Sir Graham Collingwood (Mont) Liggins
Professor Sir Graham 'Mont' Liggins work demonstrated the power of a brilliant mind to recognise the unexpected, to perform fundamental biomedical research and translate those findings into clinical practice. Hundreds of thousands of pre-term babies have survived birth due to his groundbreaking research.
Read our SPECIAL FEATURE on the life and work of this exceptional New Zealand scientist.