Ian Gordon Ross (1926–2006) was educated at the University of Sydney (BSc 1943–1946, MSc 1947–1949) and University College London (PhD 1949–1952), did postdoctoral research at Florida State University (1953–1954), and was a staff member at the University of Sydney, 1954–1967. In 1968, he moved to the Australian National University (ANU) as Professor of Chemistry, where he also became Dean of Science (1973), Deputy Vice-Chancellor (1977) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Special Projects) (1989–1990). He was instrumental in setting up Anutech, the commercial arm of the University. He was a driving force behind the establishment of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering at the ANU. His research centred on electronic spectroscopy of pi systems.
Ian Gordon Ross was born in Sydney on 5 July 1926 and died at Queanbeyan on 14 November 2006. He was educated at the University of Sydney (BSc 1943–1946, MSc 1947–1949) and at University College London (PhD 1949–1952). The Australian National University (ANU) awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Laws in 1997.
Ross did postdoctoral research at Florida State University 1953–1954, and returned to the University of Sydney as a Lecturer in 1954. He rose to Senior Lecturer, and became Reader in 1964. In 1968, he moved to the ANU as Professor of Chemistry, and also became Dean of Science in 1973. In 1977, he became Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and from 1989 to 1990 held the position of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Special Projects). He was instrumental in setting up Anutech, the commercial arm of the university, and served as director from 1979 to 1997. He was also a driving force behind the establishment of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering at the ANU, in recognition of which the building housing the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology is named after him. The ANU also awards the I. G. Ross Scholarship each year to the top student in first-year chemistry.
Ross was one of the longest-serving members of the predecessor to the Australian Research Council, the Australian Research Grants Committee, which he also chaired for three years. He led government enquiries into government laboratories and facilities (1982–1983) and higher-education libraries (1990). He was the first Secretary (Science Policy) of the Australian Academy of Science (1989– 1993). As Chair of the Physical Sciences Panel of the Cooperative Research Centres Committee (1990–1995), he led four rounds of assessments of new CRC proposals in the physical sciences.
His honours included Fellowship of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (1960) and the Institute’s H. G. Smith Medal (1971), Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science (1973), Australian Centenary Medal (2003) and Officer of the Order of Australia (1994).
Ian Gordon Ross was born in Sydney on 5 July 1926. His parents were Gordon Rowland Ross, a clerk with the Vacuum Oil company, and Isabella Monica Ross (née Jenkins), a physiotherapist. Gordon Rowland Ross was not known personally to the authors of this biographical memoir. Isabella Ross was a kind and loving person who enriched the lives of all those who knew her. Many of Ian Ross’s formative years were spent at his parents’ home at Lane Cove. He attended a small private primary school, where his love of chemistry started with a demonstration that now (perhaps alas) would be impossible: a teacher threw a piece of potassium metal into a trough of water, creating of course vivid purple flames and a violent explosion.
With his parents, he spent a year (1937) in London, where he was privately tutored by his uncle, R. Earls-Jenkins, an erudite and learned polyglot. After that, Ross completed his secondary schooling at Shore, a private school in Sydney. The chemistry teaching at Shore at that time was later described by Ross as a ‘model of muddled disorganisation’ and, as a result, he was largely self-taught in high-school chemistry. He topped the state overall in his final year at high school. He told the story of how at that time he was in a bookshop looking at chemistry texts and savouring the notion of future chemistry study at university, when he was asked by a gentleman in his late twenties what he thought of the various chemistry books he was looking at. Ross replied that while he held that by Sherwood Taylor in high esteem, that by Boden1 contained many errors. His interlocutor was in fact Alex Boden, who thereupon asked him to work with him to correct these errors (which were minor) in the next edition; thus began a lifelong friendship and co-operation.
Starting at the University of Sydney in 1943, Ross studied science, commencing with chemistry, physics, mathematics and geology in first year, chemistry, physics and mathematics for his second year, and entirely chemistry in his third year. Here his love of physical chemistry commenced. As discussed elsewhere in this biography, as an undergraduate he became involved in bushwalking, undergraduate politics, good living with convivial companions, and adventurous travel within eastern Australia. Through his involvement with the Sydney University Men’s Union, he met his future wife, Viola Bartlett. Ross did Honours in chemistry in 1946 under David Craig (later Professor David Craig FRS FAA). After Craig moved to University College London (UCL) later in 1946, Ross continued as a tutor at the University of Sydney, 1947– 1949, doing research under the direction of Professor Ray LeFèvre (later FRS FAA), then newly arrived at the School of Chemistry. During this time, Ross obtained his MSc with a thesis on dipole moments and also took courses in higher-level mathematics, which, because of the vagaries of the system, he had been unable to take as an undergraduate; as Ross said, this resulted in him doing all the analysis of a complex variable without ever having done the same for a real one. Although offered a lectureship at the University of Sydney by LeFèvre in 1949, Ross instead took up a travelling scholarship from the nascent ANU to do a PhD at UCL under David Craig. UCL at that time was a haven for many noted Australian chemists, some of whom were eventually enticed by the ANU some twenty years later to return to their native shores. Ross’s PhD topic was an experimental and theoretical study of the singlet and triplet excited states of benzene; a seminal and highly cited paper with R. G. Parr (3) was one of the outcomes of this work. (Parr had been doing similar work to Ross and Craig at the time, and these three fine scientists made the win-win decision to collaborate rather than compete.) This was the first reliably accurate quantum-chemical ab initio calculation including configuration interaction on a key molecule, a break-through paper that formed one of the bases for quantum chemistry techniques widely used today. Ross’s work at that time included extraordinarily laborious calculations using a mechanical calculator. His experimental work involved state-of-the-art innovations for UV/visible spectroscopy, some in association with Riccardo Passerini, a chemist from the University of Bologna who was visiting Professor Sir Christopher Ingold, head of the department at UCL. Ross also worked on one of the very first papers on triplet-triplet spectra (10).
In 1952, at the conclusion of his PhD, Ross took up an offer of a postdoctoral fellowship in the USA with Professor Michael Kasha at Florida State University in Tallahassee (declining the offer of a lectureship from Ingold to do so). FSU was at the earliest stages of transforming itself into the major university in research that it is now, and Ross was its first foreign postdoctoral fellow. He learnt and contributed much about experimental and theoretical work on triplet states in this period.
Ross has a legacy of 78 refereed publications. As of April 2008, ten of these papers have been cited more than 100 times, and his h index is 31. A full bibliography is given at the end of this memoir.
His early work, as an Honours and MSc student at the University of Sydney, was to look at structural characterization through the determination of dipole moments and related quantities (1, 2, 4–6, 13). While this general field is now seen with the wisdom of years not to be one that led to significant new understanding, it enabled him to cut his scientific teeth on challenging experimental techniques and kindled his love of deep theoretical understanding. Indeed, Ross later realized the fundamental theoretical reasons for the inadequacy of this whole methodology for determining structure, and discreetly pointed this out to its proponents.
His most important research work was in two fields:
(1) Earlier work in collaboration with colleagues, particularly D. P. Craig (FAA FRS) and R. G. Parr, on quantum chemistry calculations of energy levels and bonding in aromatic compounds and inorganic complexes. Quantum chemistry enables one to calculate properties of matter completely from first principles, from fundamental quantities such as the charge on the electron and Planck’s constant. It is at the core of chemistry because it provides our understanding of chemical bonding, and these days it is also a useful predictive tool; for example, enabling one to do calculations where experiments are impossible whereby one can work out whether it is possible, even in principle, to synthesize a particular compound. Even today, however, highly accurate calculations require enormous computer resources, and it is necessary to carry out calculations using various approximations appropriate for the target system.
The particular aspect of Ross’s early work that was most influential was the introduction of a higher level of accuracy than hitherto attempted on a significant system that went above the common approximations then in use (3). The computational task was to be carried out by the molecular-orbital method, using properly antisymmetrized wave functions and including for the first time configuration interaction, a refinement that Craig had recently introduced to molecular calculations. The calculations were to involve as few empirical elements as possible and so might be called ‘ab initio’: indeed, this was the first paper in which the term ‘ab initio quantum calculation’ was used, a term that is now part of the daily vocabulary in chemistry. This paper was among the first to use what is now an essential method in accurate quantum-chemical calculations, a tool that is very widely used by chemists and physicists. The work required extensive integral evaluation.
At that time, all of these calculations were liable to be contaminated by error in the algebraic formulae or the arithmetic, and a good part of the work consisted of verifying the algebra of the integrals and then obtaining numerical values for the particular parameters required by benzene. The other part of the work consisted of setting up the energy matrices and solving them for the lowest eigenvalue. All this was done on a Marchant mechanical calculator and took many months. For example, to calculate in duplicate the lowest root of a 9 × 9 matrix took a long day. Both these types of tasks are now done routinely in standard computer packages. The results suggested that the second excited singlet state of benzene (there was little argument about the first) had symmetry E2g, whereas the consensus now is that the state that is observed (as a diffuse system of medium intensity) is a B1u state; the absorption to the E2g state has not been detected and is presumably buried. Ross worked on both benzene (15, 16) and acetylene (7), the latter being the first serious calculation involving a triple bond. Except for a small number of papers (59, 78), Ross did not do much more in this field, but his contribution in the early days was seminal. Concomitant with this trail-blazing theory was challenging experimental work involving spectroscopic studies of triplet states (10, 11).
(2) Experimental studies and theoretical interpretation of the electronic spectra of aromatic molecules. Initially, the work was restricted to the aromatic hydrocarbons but later extended to the aza-aromatics. The work was conducted in the vapour, solution, mixed crystal and pure crystal phases. This formed the bulk of Ross’s scientific contributions, and is encompassed in many publications (11, 14, 17, 21, 22, 25–29, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 46, 50–55, 58, 59, 61–64, 66–83, 85, 86).
In the first half of the twentieth century, molecular electronic spectroscopy had largely been confined to diatomic and to some extent triatomic molecules, because these have sufficient simplicity to allow successful spectral analyses to be undertaken— in other words, enabling sense to be made of the observed forest of spectral lines. Ross was among the pioneers in tackling the spectra of aromatic molecules. As he said, it is essential to realize that these molecules, containing dozens rather than two or three atoms, are not just big diatomics. For the aromatic hydrocarbons, the UV/visible electronic spectra could be interpreted in terms of transitions involving only the delocalized π electrons. This approach introduced some simplification to understanding the spectra of these polyatomic molecules. In addition, for molecules with high symmetry, such as benzene and naphthalene, the application of group theory could reduce the problem further, almost down to the level of complexity of a diatomic or triatomic spectrum. Ross’s favourite molecule was azulene which, instead of having the two symmetric 6-membered fused rings of naphthalene, has fused 5-and 7-membered rings. By reduction of the molecular symmetry, which is the case for the molecule azulene, Ross had increased considerably the level of complexity of the electronic and vibrational spectra. He obtained a huge amount of spectral data on this molecule, including bringing to light some very surprising results: for example, where one would have expected the second system for such a large molecule to be diffuse, it is astonishingly sharp. This work was done in Ottawa with Don Ramsay in the Nobel laureate Gerhard Herzberg’s division within the Canadian National Research Council, the ‘world headquarters’ of the spectroscopy of small molecules and radicals. Ross and Ramsay looked at the spectrum of azulene with Ramsay’s 7.3 m Ebert spectrometer, built in-house. While the resolution of Ramsay’s instrument was at least five times better than Ross could achieve with his own 3.4 meter Jarrell-Ash, Ross thought there would be little point in doing it, supposing that he had seen all the bands as well as they could be seen, given the size of the molecule and the expectation that no rotational structure would be resolvable. However, it seemed impolite not to accept the offer. Ramsay’s splendid technical officer, Werner Goetz, set up the experiment and took a 17th-order (!!) photograph of the 350 nm origin region. Subsequently, in the red light of the darkroom, the researchers looked with astonishment as a rich forest of fine structure showed up on the still wet plate. Then Herzberg chanced to come in. They explained what they had been doing and passed it to him. Herzberg whistled in astonishment.
These results had a big impact on the understanding of the relevance of energy gaps to the production of diffuse spectra. The azulene spectral results obtained by Ross revealed that the energy gap between the ground and first excited electronic state was similar to that between the first and second excited states, and sufficiently large to allow only relatively small radiation-less transition rates, and consequently sharp spectra. The paper by Ross and Byrne on ‘Electronic relaxation as a cause of diffuseness in electronic spectra’ (58) set the framework for much of our understanding of electronic relaxation and radiationless transitions.
Ross also obtained data for another class of aromatics: those with one or more nitrogens substituting for carbons in the rings. The presence of the nitrogens introduced a further level of complexity through the participation of lone pair (n) electrons in electronic transitions in the UV/visible frequency range. Ross both used and developed elegant experimental techniques for obtaining these spectra. For a number of azanaphthalenes, Ross and co-workers recorded highly resolved spectra (by some researchers they are described as beautiful) and succeeded in providing detailed spectral analyses. Among these, the studies on quinoxaline and 1,5-naphthyridine stand out. The latter provided an example of a forbidden (n-p) transition that was magnetic-dipole allowed. In general, the vapour-phase spectra were marked by the occurrence of vibronic origins in addition to the true electronic origins, the appearances of extensive sequence structure, evidence for close-lying but more energetic n-π and π-π transitions, distinctive rotational band contours, and frequently what appeared to be anomalous vibrational bands. The π-π transitions showed, as expected, marked similarity to transitions of the aromatic hydrocarbon, naphthalene. Attention was focused on each of these spectral characteristics, generating much novel and pioneering work. Ross’s published work includes papers on band contour analyses, relative intensities of sequence structure, high resolution electronic spectra, diffuseness in electronic spectra, and spectral consequences of energetically near-lying states. For many of the azanaphthalenes studied, spectra were also recorded of deuterium-substituted molecules. Such spectra helped to confirm the proposed spectral analyses. Ross was also involved in purely theoretical work on the spectroscopy of the aza-aromatics. One paper of note, relevant for the azanaphthalenes, was with the Nobel laureate R. Hoffmann, and dealt with ‘Through bond interactions of non-bonding orbitals’(61). Much of his work on the azanaphthalenes was carried out with G. Fischer. Research students involved in the work include Darryl Freeman, Graeme R. Hunt, Lloyd Logan, A. D. (Tony) Jordan, Alan E. W. Knight, A. R. (Tony) Lacey, Ilse Buduls, John P. Byrne and Erol McCoy.
Ross’s work on the aromatics was not confined to just obtaining spectra. He developed elegant spectral analyses and also theories that made the leap from what might be described as ‘looking at the pretty pictures’ to qualitative and quantitative understanding of the spectral features. The electronic spectra of such large organic molecules involve a vast number of rovibrational levels associated with each electronic state, making the experimental resolution of fine structure impossible (with some notable exceptions such as azulene). However, sense could be made by consideration of the rotational band contours. Moreover, for reasons that were only generically understood—increasing density of states— such electronic spectra become more and more diffuse with higher frequency. Ross gave a definitive analysis of the precise causes of this diffuseness, including an elegant interpretive tool involving predicting the change in geometry of the excited state. Strongly related to the understanding is the phenomenon of ‘radiationless transitions’—internal conversion and intersystem crossing involving one or more excited electronic states. Ross gave the most satisfactory of all accounts of these phenomena, that laid to rest many mysteries and explained the phenomena in terms of a coherent theoretical description. Most of the significant ideas regarding excited states of large molecules originated from Ross’s work. Ross also performed pioneering experimental work on collisional energy transfer in large gas-phase molecules, providing data and theoretical interpretation that materially assisted the later understanding of the pressure dependence of the rate coefficients of unimolecular reactions, work done with Robert G. (Bob) Gilbert (later FAA) as a research student (60, 65).
In the last years of his life, Ross returned to an unresolved spectroscopy problem dating back to the 1960s. It concerned the electronic spectrum of dicyanoacetylene, a linear 6-atom molecule later found to be of astronomical interest. The spectrum had been recorded (with Don Ramsay at NRC Canada) in the 1960s but no acceptable analysis had been achieved. With the help of spectral predictions, now achievable through molecular orbital calculations carried out on super-computers, a successful interpretation of the spectrum was finally achieved. The spectrum displayed many of the features characteristic of the aromatic spectra and mentioned above. It featured a forbidden transition, vibronic origins, sequence structure, resolved rotational band contours, and apparently anomalous vibrational bands. This recent work was carried out with Gad Fischer (93, 94).
(3) Ross also worked on a range of other subjects in physical chemistry, especially other aspects of molecular spectroscopy. He performed elegant work on normal mode and rotational band analyses that also provided essential tools for his work on the spectroscopy of aromatics (21, 23, 41, 56, 84). In the early days of this work, he made pioneering work of one of Australia’s first computers, SILLIAC at the University of Sydney. This road exploited the FG matrix formalism for molecular vibrations expounded in a then new but now classic text by Wilson, Decius and Cross.2 His naphthalene study with Darryl Freeman (22) was the most complex thus far implemented, and (contemporaneously with work by Whiffen in the UK3) the first of its kind.
Ross also worked on inorganic spectra (18, 20, 35, 49)—particularly the delta bond and the high-spin/low-spin crossover in Fe(II) complexes, spectroscopically fascinating molecules such as OsO4 and RuO4. With Ray Martin (later FAA), Ross worked on an intriguing—indeed, almost a classic—situation in transition metal chemistry. The energy level pattern of the d-electron states depends on the ligand field strength, and is commonly represented by diagrams (Tanabe-Sugano diagrams) that show, in particular, that if the field strength is strong enough there may be a change in the identity of the lowest state, due to a crossover. Thus, in Fe(III), high-spin complexes give way to low-spin ones. An interesting situation arises when the ligand field strength is such as to bring the high-and low-spin states to approximate degeneracy. Martin had recognized likely candidates for this situation in the alkyl-substituted dithiocarbamate complexes of Fe(II), and with his student Alan White had observed the temperature dependence of their magnetic moments. Fitting the data to theory proved more difficult than expected and Ross and Martin were for a long time dissatisfied with their understanding of what was happening. They did, however, have admirable success when the high-pressure chemist Arnold Ewald (of CSIRO, but working in the Sydney department) undertook to see if he could measure the pressure dependence of the magnetic moment. This had not been done before. The results were strikingly clear (35). For normal complexes, the magnetic susceptibility was independent of pressure. For one of Martin’s complexes, it decreased linearly with pressure, as pressure favoured the more compact low-spin form. The paper, and especially the demonstration of the high-pressure adaptation of the Gouy method, attracted a great deal of attention.
Also with Martin, Ross explored the proposition that the standard little family of bond types, σ and π, might be augmented by the next in line, a bond formed between two d orbitals: a δ bond. X-ray crystallographers had shown that copper acetate monohydrate was actually binuclear, and Brain Figgis (FAA) and Martin had postulated that the two facing d orbitals formed a δ bond. Ross re-interpreted the published paramagnetic resonance spectrum to show that it fitted what one might expect from a δ bond. The bond is very weak—the singlet to triplet excitation energy is only 300 cm−1. A Valence Bond calculation of that quantity was then undertaken, a challenging task because of the d orbitals. A VB method was chosen because the interacting orbitals are abnormally far apart and simple molecular-orbital methods exaggerate the weight of polar structures. Later, Ballhausen, a prolific Danish inorganic theoretician, contended via a molecular-orbital calculation that the interacting orbitals were dz2 and the metal-metal bond therefore of σ type. Using data on polarized absorption spectra of the crystal, Ross showed that Ballhausen had made a mistake.
Ross also worked in solid-state theory and experimental spectroscopy (45, 48). In mixed-crystal theory, he worked with a PhD student, Dick Body, to contribute a different algebraic approach, and performed some instructive calculations on shallow-trap situations of the kind produced by isotopically mixed crystals. He also worked on crystal packing of aromatic crystals (63).
Ross was a gifted lecturer, although the latter half of his professional life took him away from that field. The average student enjoyed his lectures, which were lively and in which Ross was able to put across the basic concepts of abstract quantum mechanics in a comprehensible way. The better students were delighted to have the privilege of being taught by someone who truly understood quantum mechanics, and taught it as a logical and elegant subject directly related to the prediction and interpretation of experiment, rather than as a brand of philosophy and/or witchcraft. This was especially rewarding in his years teaching physical chemistry at the University of Sydney, with its large classes of students of a wide range of abilities.
Ross supervised some twenty-two Honours students, eighteen PhD/MSc students, and had thirty-nine postdoctoral or peer collaborations. Those whom he mentored found their way into a wide range of positions, widely dispersed geographically.
Throughout his professional life, Ross was an outstanding administrator who took on managerial tasks not for love of power, but because he realized that he could implement strategies and policies that were to the overall benefit to students, to staff and to the scientific and technical community, in Australia and beyond. These contributions had a major beneficial impact on Australian science.
Like so many others, Ross learnt managerial skills, not by doing an MBA (which did not exist in those days anyway), but by being active in student organisations— usually a far better means to become a good high-level administrator than an MBA could ever be. In Ross’s second undergraduate year at the University of Sydney, he and a colleague, Glen Duncan, made their first tentative steps in the arena of university political life by starting a Junior Science Association, with the aim of enthusing their lively group of science contemporaries. They viewed it as a complement as well as a counter to the existing Science Association, which had been established in the nineteenth century and had an aura of no nonsense about it. Albeit short-lived, this was for Ross an introduction to a plethora of activities in student politics. These included conducting a questionnaire of student opinion on various aspects of their course— an astonishing innovation (although fortunately de rigeur now) that received some notoriety for the frank criticisms produced. Other activities included the creation of a sketch for the University Revue—produced by Neville Wran, later Premier of New South Wales—and election to the Board of Directors of the Sydney University Union. Over its hundred-plus years of existence, this Board has wavered between being the plaything of budding student politicians and being of real benefit to the student body: in Ross’s era, it was truly the latter.
In the following year, Ross became secretary of the Science Association, was again active in writing and producing a sketch for the University Revue, and gained re-election to the Union Board. His entrepreneurial flair became evident in the production of a Yearbook while secretary of the Science Association. He introduced the costly exercise of including photographs of all third and fourth year students, which necessitated undertaking approaches to industry to raise advertising money—an endeavour in which he was successful.
A year after returning to the University of Sydney in 1954 following his period abroad, Ross was elected President of the Union Board. The Union was outgrowing its building and resources, and Ross was largely instrumental in finding the necessary funding and getting the go-ahead for extensions and renovations to be undertaken. The plans included building a proper theatre, the Union Theatre, which is to this day an important part of the life of the University of Sydney. Ross’s Union involvement led to his starting a lunch club at which colleagues from many academic disciplines would meet once a week. This club continued long after his departure from the university.
In the early 1960s, Ross became president of the Sydney University Staff Association. Although innocent in trade union tactics, he quickly grasped the necessary skill and knowledge, although not sufficiently quickly to obtain a pay rise for university staff when he led a delegation to the Vice-Chancellor. On the other hand, he did succeed, in a publication entitled ‘University Ugliness’, in focusing the attention of the university authorities on the grim lines of the new constructions that were proceeding on the campus. This caused some red faces. He was also active in issues governing the appointment (or non-appointment) of new staff where political overtones may have played a role, such as in the notorious case of Frank Knopfelmacher. In this instance, he had to confront the Federation of University Staff Associations (FAUSA), where unhelpful and somewhat extreme demands were being made. Through much discussion and effort, he managed to defuse the issue. Furthermore, he believed that FAUSA had to be seen as something more than an academic trade union and that its brief should also include academic matters. To this end, he obtained money to run a FAUSA conference on the teaching of chemistry. The funds permitted attendance from all the Australian universities, at a time when interactions among staff at the various institutions were very limited. Only one conference was held, but it exposed variations in the approaches to teaching science to all participants, to the subsequent benefit of chemistry undergraduates throughout the country. It was at this time that Ross was invited to join the editorial board of the Current Affairs Bulletin—a product of the continuing education department of the University. He held this position for a number of years, including after his move to the ANU.
The difficulties that Australian PhD graduates could experience in obtaining permanent employment were of considerable concern to Ross, and led him to consider science policy. A product of this concern was an article, ‘Science in Australia’ (30), that he and Lawrie Lyons (FAA) contributed to the Current Affairs Bulletin. This reached a wide audience and appears to have been the catalyst for the invitation to join the editorial board. The consideration of science policy influenced much of Ross’s thinking in the years to come. For him, important issues included the frequency and duration of contacts between academics at different Australian universities, and research funding support.
A desire to become acquainted with the statistics concerning the supply and demand for science and engineering PhD graduates led Ross to supervise two Honours students on this topic. The research involved a mail survey of the supply and demand for PhDs in Australia, examination of R&D in one particular company, and field trips to research laboratories of a number of other companies. The students were also assigned a number of other tasks to prepare them for the real world that they would encounter on their field trips. This latter aspect was a real Ross touch to education.
The work on the survey of PhDs, which achieved almost 100% coverage, was published (38, 43). It predicted correctly that by the 1970s there would be a surplus of PhDs for university recruitment. This was the first rigorous study of the issues relevant to science and technology PhD graduates in Australia (as would be expected from Ross’s rigorous approach to his own scientific endeavours), and the outcomes had, and still have, significant impact on policy.
In 1968, Ross accepted the position of Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the ANU. Together with the move to Canberra, he also was heavily involved in preparations for the IUPAC–ICC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry–International Coordination Chemistry) conference that was to take place in Sydney in 1969. This was to be the largest chemical congress held up to that point in Australia, and Ross was Chairman of the Programme Committee (57). For such a large conference, this was an immense task and involved many frustrations with last-minute programme changes, non-appearances (particularly from the Soviet block), and participants with insufficient funding (mainly from Asia). Ross showed amazing skill and patience in resolving these issues.
In 1973, Ross became Dean of Science at the ANU. He continued to be involved in research but this was now mainly conducted through research assistants and collaborators.
During this time, Ross was appointed a member of the Australian Research Grants Committee. He joined the three-person chemistry sub-committee and covered the areas of quantum chemistry, statistical physical chemistry and (if required) some inorganic chemistry. He served eight years and was involved in much travel and hard work. He greatly enjoyed learning what research was being undertaken throughout the country and becoming acquainted with the researchers. He appreciated the deep respect for one another that developed among all the committee members.
In the turbulent student days of the mid 1970s, Ross accepted a twelve-month stint as one of two Pro-Vice-Chancellors to assist the ANU’s Acting Vice-Chancellor. He was assigned a mixed portfolio including SGS (School of General Studies) affairs, the Buildings and Grounds division, the library, the computer centre, and most aspects of campus welfare. He was also involved with astronomy, where considerable diplomacy was needed to resolve troublesome issues with the Anglo-Australian Telescope Board. This connection to astronomy continued for fifteen years—he had a deep interest in astronomy that went back to his undergraduate days, and he sometimes opined that had the right opportunity presented itself he may well have switched to it. Patience and tact were a prime requisite in his successful dealings with the demands of militant students on such issues as low-cost student housing and student control of academic decisions.
In 1976, Ross left the Department of Chemistry to become Deputy Vice-Chancellor under the new Vice-Chancellor, Anthony Low. He was also heavily involved in the creation of the commercial arm of the university, Anutech. This had its origins some years earlier when, under the auspices of Jim Parker, a new process for the refining of copper was being considered and a company, Anumin—of which Ross was a director—was formed. Following Parker’s and Anumin’s move to Murdoch University, a new company came into being to exploit a grant from the Premier of New South Wales to build a demonstration solar power station. Ross became one of the original four members of the board. Although the construction became a long and difficult exercise, some success was finally achieved, with considerable credit to the ANU. Other commercial transactions followed. In the years that followed, Anutech became a very successful company and Ross retained his interest and directorship for a considerable period.
In the early 1960s, the ANU did not fully appreciate the importance and role that computing would hold in the coming decades. Over the years, the information-technology questions that Ross had to contend with included resolving staff issues, finding funding for purchases, convincing sceptics, and finally administering selection of the best and most powerful computer that the university could afford. This led in the mid-1980s to the purchase of a Fujitsu supercomputer, which marked a turning point in the University’s computing facilities and reputation. Because of the large expense involved and possible negative sentiments anticipated from other universities, Ross deemed it diplomatic to offer 10% of computer time to other universities. In computing, there was no academic initiative to parallel the advance in actual computing power brought about by the acquisition of the Fujitsu supercomputer. This led to the creation, much through Ross’s instigation, of a Centre of Information Science Research (CISR), with a mandate to support via a competitive process innovative research in any field of computing or communications. With the establishment of a Research School of Information Science and Engineering some ten years later, the CISR was integrated into the new unit.
From about the mid-1970s, there had been a relative and gradual contraction in the finances available to run the University, and this led to considerable competition between different departments and different interests. Ross felt that it was necessary to bring some order into the University’s spending on equipment. This thinking led to the creation of a Large Equipment Committee, which brought about rationalization of equipment purchase. Ross played a large role in securing funding and authorization for the construction of the 2.3 metre thin-mirror, computer-driven, altitude-azimuth, rotating-dome telescope located at Siding Spring Observatory. This was part of a move into the new generation of astronomical telescopes. A proposed venture into space in a project called ‘Starlab’, which required far greater funding, did not receive the green light, despite Ross’s belief that this was the kind of bold initiative in which a national university such as the ANU should be involved.
Ross was involved in a number of reviews (87, 88, 90). That of the university library resulted in major savings and rationalizations. In 1981, he was asked to chair a committee to review Commonwealth Government laboratories. The task took up nearly one-third of his time and covered some 300 laboratories. The final report went to an Interdepartmental Committee and it was a long time before the responses to it were tabled.
At the end of 1988, Ross’s appointment as Deputy Vice-Chancellor expired. He was then in his 63rd year and proposed that rather than burden the contracting budget of the Department of Chemistry with his return, he be appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor. During this time, he acquired responsibility for the new concept of the Graduate School, although the foundations for this had been set by his predecessor, Eric Bachelard. Towards the end of his Pro-Vice-Chancellorship, Ross was commissioned by the government department responsible for higher education to chair a Working Party on Libraries in Higher Education Institutions. The rapidly rising costs experienced by all libraries was at the heart of this review. The final report received wide acclaim, beyond any expectation that the working party might have held.
At the time of his retirement from the ANU, in 1990, Ross was appointed Chair of the Physical Sciences Panel of the Cooperative Research Centres. The role demanded reading of applications, chairing meetings that evaluated these and the interviews of those short-listed, and representing the panel to the CRC Committee itself. His eight years on the ARGC had well prepared Ross for such a task. Initially the panel consisted of six members, but later it expanded to eight. For Ross, the CRC programme was a five-to six-year on-going professional activity. In 1995, towards the conclusion of his time as Panel Chair, he wrote a submission to the CRC Evaluation Steering Committee offering information and comments on selected aspects of the CRC programme that he felt were noteworthy. He also during these years served a term as the first of the new ‘Sec.Ds’—Secretaries (Science Policy)—of the Australian Academy of Science. Together with Keith Boardman, he was asked to supply an update, from the time covered by the published history of the Academy’s first twenty-five years, for the field of Science Policy. In 1993, he agreed to chair the Board of Governors of an independent not-for-profit organization called the Communication Research Institute of Australia (CRIA). He was glad to be associated with an organization that was living on its earnings, yet doing research at an international level.
The Ian Ross Building of the ANU Faculty of Engineering and Information technology was opened in 2000. Ross considered the naming, which honoured his endeavours in making possible the existence of such a faculty within the ANU, a generous gesture by his university colleagues.
Ross was an inveterate bushwalker, and during his time at the University of Sydney became the foundation president of the new university bushwalking club. He had many legendary bushwalking exploits, and also showed the leadership and administrative abilities that were such a distinguishing characteristic of his later career. He also formed many lifelong friendships. His love of the bush was long-enduring and indeed was pivotal in his choosing his house in the Canberra region, an extensive building deep in the bush on the outskirts of Queanbeyan that became the scene of innumerable social occasions involving good food, good wine and good company. His sense of fun echoed his enjoyment of life. As one of inummerable examples, his work on acetylene came about because he worked in the same basement laboratory in London as G. W. King, who was very interested in this molecule. Over the door to this laboratory there was a sign in Dante’s Italian, ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here’, put in place by Ross. In 1947–1949, while Ross was working with LeFèvre, the latter acquired an infrared spectrometer, kept firmly locked away in an annexe to the main laboratory. Ross needed to use it, so devised a way to enter at weekends through a window, make his measurements, and leave without trace. He was happy to tell the story in later years. One of his adventures was to drive across the Nullarbor Plain with two friends in an old Buick Straight-Eight. They had the misfortune to have a big-end bearing seize. Their solution was to remove that piston altogether and to press on in what Ross said with pride had become a Buick Straight-Seven. It was typical of Ross that in his time as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and later, he created his own version of the ‘happy hour’. After work on Fridays, he would invite a select few to his office for drinks. This could drag on and it was rumoured that Ross had a few carefully planned routes, free of breath-testing, from his office in the University to his home in Queanbeyan.
Ross met Viola Bartlett when he was on the board of the Sydney University Union in 1954. Viola, a very intelligent and socially adept person who was forced by circumstance to leave school on her 14th birthday, had worked in a series of clerical jobs and settled in on such a position at the Union. There she was always a cheerful soul, welcoming and helping students and staff. She and Ross had a close relationship for many years and in 1975 she followed him to Canberra, where they finally married later that year. Because both were orphans, possibly for the first time in builder–client relationships, the best man and ‘bridesmaid’—the latter in a blue serge suit—were their builders at the Queanbeyan house, Peter and John Roden.
Ian and Viola were a loving couple, always full of humour and the joy of life. They were wonderful hosts and wonderful catalysts at any social gathering: they engendered happiness and laughter, and lubricated their guests very well. They had a huge range of friends in Australia and well beyond. Viola contracted intestinal cancer in the 1970s, resulting in ileostemy, but this affliction was never seen in her demeanour. Viola predeceased Ian by a year.
Ross was a superb mentor to a wide range of people. Those for whom he was ‘responsible’, such as research students and postdoctoral fellows, found that he kept an ear to the ground for good job opportunities and passed word of these on to them. He was also adept at saying the right thing at the right time to potential employers (academic and otherwise) of ‘his’ people. These words were never exaggerated, and people knew they could totally rely on Ross’s judgement, honesty, perspicacity and wisdom in his recommendations. A reference for one of his former students stated that this person, when confronted with an experimental obstacle, would never acknowledge defeat but would complete the task ‘in a torrent of sweat and blasphemy’; this reference secured the position for that former student. Many of his research students were larger-than-life characters of considerable colour, as was Ross himself.
His mentoring went far beyond keeping an eye out for positions for his charges. For those who wished, he was always a ready listener, there to offer advice when asked. This advice was always given with both wisdom and knowledge. He was also there to put in a discreet word, or make discreet enquiries, when needed.
Times with Ross were never dull. In both conversation and correspondence with his friends, his humour and enjoyment of life were ever present. These conversations were doubled in pleasure for those present when Viola was there.
Ross’s friends were not just academics. Indicative of his nature is the fact that one of the people assisting most with his care in his last months of cancer—Ross had smoked for much of his life and only realised the dangers of this too late to avoid the damage to his system—was the person who had worked as odd-jobs man for him and Viola, John Sirola.
This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.20, no.1, 2009. It was written by:
Numbers in brackets refer to the bibliography.
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