Being appointed a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC) holds a special place in the heart of Professor Valerie Beral.
"I'm very, very honoured," Prof Beral said from her home in Oxford, in the UK.
"It's very special because as an Australian, to be honoured by your home country is just brilliant.
"My heart is in Australia but my work is here."
Beral's devotion to researching the causes of cancer and other diseases in women took her to the United Kingdom some 40 years ago.
Since then her breakthrough work linking the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and breast cancer has seen her appointed a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The Sydney-born researcher is being recognised for her services to medicine and women's health through significant advances in cancer research and epidemiology.
Prof Beral's Million Women Study, published in 2003, produced definitive evidence that taking HRT increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.
"As a result of the drop in the use of HRT in the last decade now, breast cancer rates have fallen for the first time ever really," she said.
"So it's nice to see people taking notice."
Prof Beral grew up and went to medical school in Australia, but said it wasn't possible to carry out her work in her home country.
"The scale of the work I do, and the scale of the research funding that I get too, it would be very difficult to do in Australia - I rely on big populations and big funding," she said.
"It's hard in Australia unfortunately. I wish I could."
