Since the late 1970s, the Mayo Clinic Department of Neurology has hosted a unique fellowship dedicated to Australian and New Zealand neurologists. This study outlines the origins of the program, its evolution over nearly five decades, and its role as a model of sustained, mutually beneficial international collaboration in neurology.

The Mayo brothers established a tradition of welcoming international medical trainees. In 1924, Dr. William J. Mayo travelled to Australia and New Zealand, helping to forge early connections. Between the 1950s and mid-1970s, the first Australian and New Zealand neurologists trained at Mayo Clinic, sometimes coordinated through the Australian Postgraduate Federation in Medicine.

This review is based on archival primary source material from the W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine at Mayo Clinic, along with Australian and New Zealand medical history sources and contemporary accounts.

During a 1977 visit to Australia, Mayo Clinic Neurology Chair Dr. Jack Whisnant formalized a fellowship for an Australian neurology graduate within the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. Australian Dr. Peter Williamson, who trained in neurology at Mayo Clinic from 1968 to 1970, helped arrange the details as Honorary Secretary of the Australian Association of Neurologists (later New Zealand was added to the title). The first fellow was Dr. Raymond Garrick of Sydney, who trained from 1978 to 1979. This annually awarded Advanced Clinical Neurology Fellowship remains active nearly five decades later and was expanded into a 2-year flexible format program in 2015. The fellowship has demonstrated longstanding mutual benefit.