Written by I.W. Wark and E.G. Ellis.

• Introduction
• Personal
• Education
• Early professional experience
• Concern for the employee
• Wartime activities
• Post-war career – The Zinc Corporation and CRA
• Mawby, the mineralogist
• Contributions to the mining and minerals industries
• Other activities
• Honours
• Summing up
• About this memoir
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes

Introduction

Sir Maurice Mawby was a memorable figure in the Australian minerals industry – an Australian proud of his country and of what mining had done to make it strong. He was one of a handful of professional mining executives who set in motion the greatest upsurge in mineral exploration, discovery, and development ever seen in the country's history. Well known and highly regarded, he inspired international confidence in the people who worked with him.

There can be no better introduction than Professor Geoffrey Blainey's tribute at Sir Maurice's funeral service on 8 August 1977:

Maurice Alan Edgar Mawby...was intensely proud of the mining field and its people. His formal education was entirely in Broken Hill but he was mainly his own teacher; no formal syllabus could have given him the sheer range and depth of knowledge which he acquired; nor the wisdom.

At the Pinnacles mine, at the old Junction North, and at the Zinc Corporation he learned the practical skills of the mining industry. He learned them so well that by the age of thirty-three he was said to be the only Australian simultaneously to possess a mine manager's certificate, the proven capacity to run a big metallurgical operation, and a wide knowledge of geology.

When directing the search for minerals, he combined the intoxicating optimism of the bush prospector and the sobering caution of the rational geologist. He was prominent in the rediscovery of scheelite at King Island, and in three world-class finds in the 1950s and 1960s: the bauxite at Weipa, the iron ore at Tom Price, and the copper at Bougainville.

No new nation in the third world probably owes as much, to a single economic event, as Papua New Guinea owes to the opening up of Bougainville Copper.

Sir Maurice Mawby's success in opening new mining fields was remarkable, but then he was a remarkable man.

He believed that every human being deserved a place in the sun. Thousands of working people at Broken Hill and elsewhere took pride in his achievements because he took a personal pride in theirs. He was both an extraordinary man and an ordinary man. His powerful wide-ranging mind was guided by humility and warmheartedness and tolerance. In the deepest sense of the word he was a democrat.

He was a nature conservationist thirty years before the phrase came into vogue. He backed the botanist, Albert Morris, in the pioneering plan to stabilize the drifting sand around Broken Hill and curb the dust storms that almost suffocated the city. At weekends in the late 1930s he himself did much of the digging of holes, the filling of tins with soil, and the planting of native shrubs.

He loved this country – I need hardly say it in this gathering. He had a deep affection for the terrain, the rocks and the soils, the native plants on which he was an authority, the native animals, and the racehorse and the Aberdeen Angus...

In recognition of his conspicuous service to the cause of science, Sir Maurice was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in l969.

Personal

Maurice Mawby was born on 31 August 1904 in 'The Silver City' of Broken Hill, New South Wales, the second of three sons of Charles and Alice Mawby. Charles Mawby, born in Cheshire, had been brought to Australia as a child; his wife – and her parents too – were born in the mining district of Burra in South Australia. Mawby's parents moved to Broken Hill, where Charles owned a grocer's shop. A kindly and generous man, Charles was said to be too liberal with credit for the family ever to become prosperous. The eldest son, Victor, died in infancy before Maurice was born; the youngest, Jack, still lives in Broken Hill.

The mining companies at that time did little for the dusty, isolated town. There were few social services, and there was no promise of work ahead. The houses were built of mud and stone. The railroad to Adelaide was the main link with the outside world; the line to Sydney came much later. Water was scarce, and Saturday's bath had to serve 'mum, dad, and the kids' before the precious water was used to grow a tree. But there was colour and charm. The Afghan hawkers on their camels traded everything from clothing to household equipment and tools. Travel north was by camel. Wool from the Darling River stations was transported by boat to Goolwa in South Australia.

As a boy and young man Maurice would cycle to the outskirts of the town, shooting rabbits, collecting minerals, identifying and pressing botanical specimens, and observing the fauna of the area. He became an ardent naturalist – everything within the earth, or growing on it, or living from it, remained a passionate interest throughout his life. His knowledge of botany was as impressive as his knowledge of minerals, and he could name practically every species of eucalypt. He was a member of the Ornithological and Field Naturalists Societies.

In 1929, at the age of 25, Maurice Mawby married Lena White, a Broken Hill girl; her family had been friendly with the Mawbys for many years. Both families had moved from the Burra district to Broken Hill; both were retailers. Mawby's son, Colin, was born in 1932. He accompanied his father on many prospecting and shooting expeditions, and strong and lasting bonds of friendship and respect were forged between father and son. In due course Mawby derived enormous pleasure from his five grandchildren, visiting them frequently and watching their development with great interest.

An unusually active and successful career was no impediment to a good family life. Except when travelling, work was so ordered that Mawby could be home by six o'clock each evening. In 1945 came a move to Melbourne, where he was thereafter based. An unostentatious man, the home he acquired in 1946 in Mont Albert Road, Canterbury, served him for the rest of his life, and Lady Mawby still lives there.

Warmth and concern were not confined to the family circle. Old friendships were renewed on frequent visits to Broken Hill, and an exceptional memory meant that Mawby never forgot a person or a name. He read the Broken Hill papers and would write a letter of congratulation, encouragement, or sympathy when there was a personal item concerning a former schoolmate or colleague.

Education

Mawby realised early the importance of education, and for him it remained a life-long process. Attendance at the Broken Hill High School followed from the North Broken Hill Primary School. School reports, though not outstanding, showed aptitude for mathematics, economics, and chemistry; he topped the class in chemistry. Mawby decided on a mining career, and proceeded on a leaving scholarship to the Broken Hill Technical College (a branch of the Sydney Technical College) to do a diploma course in chemistry. The scholarship would have entitled him to attend the Sydney campus of the college, but the family was in no position to subsidise living away from home (Sydney was a three-day train journey from Broken Hill in those days), and Mawby was too independent to accept the offer of one of the masters at the college (Albert Noellat) to finance him through a university course.

He successively gained diplomas in metallurgy (with credit) and geology (with honours), the latter carrying with it the Bronze Medal of the Sydney Technical College. Several years later he secured first place in the New South Wales State Examination for the Mine Manager's Certificate. The qualifications in mining, metallurgy, and geology were obtained while gaining practical experience in a number of facets of the mining industry.

In 1929, at the age of 24 and while still attending evening courses at the college, Mawby himself became a part-time lecturer in geology and metallurgy. Eight years later, no longer able to devote sufficient time to lecturing, he became a member of the Advisory Committee of the college, serving in this capacity until his departure from Broken Hill in 1945. He was proud that so small an institution produced so many mine managers and senior technicians, not only for the local mines but also for other mining fields in Australia and abroad.

When a knighthood was conferred upon him in 1963, Mawby chose for his coat of arms, in which are incorporated a wooden poppet-head, a mallee fowl, and the Sturt desert pea, the motto of the Broken Hill High School – palma non sine pulvere – which may be freely translated as 'no prize is won without effort'.

Early professional experience

Employment opportunities were scarce when Mawby left school at the age of sixteen during a protracted miners' strike. His first job was growing seedlings in a local nursery at 10 shillings a week. In 1921 when the New South Wales Government set up a Technical Health Commission, headed by Professor H.G. Chapman, to inquire into industrial diseases at Broken Hill, he became a laboratory assistant analysing human organs to ascertain where lead accumulated. In 1922, when the Commission completed its investigations, Chapman urged Mawby to study biochemistry, but he was already committed to mining.

Mawby's long association with mining began in 1922 as an assayer and analyst with the Junction North Company which, in addition to the Junction North mine, operated the smaller White Leads, Pinnacles, Mayflower, and Allendale mines. The company, though small, had introduced cascade flotation and other innovative practices. From the beginning he was in a stimulating and sympathetic work environment.

Mawby's duties at the Junction North mine were diverse. He operated a mill for treating crude ore, he ran a flotation plant for treating sulphide slimes, and he treated a furnace product that was the reformed sulphide from the reduced wastes of the oxidised slimes. Later, at the Pinnacles mine, he was in charge of the concentrator, which treated five tons of ore an hour by tabling and flotation to produce a high-grade silver-lead concentrate.

At the early age of 20, Mawby was company metallurgist in charge of some 80 men – a remarkable accomplishment and an early indication of his potential as a leader. But the company was soon to cease operating because it could not meet the compensation commitments recommended by the Chapman Commission. However the manager of the Pinnacles mine, W.J. Turner, then undertook a final geological survey at the Junction North and surrounding mines, and although a position was available with another mine, Mawby stayed on as Turner's assistant for six months.

By now Mawby had obtained his metallurgy diploma and had completed most of the subjects for mining engineering, so he sought to enlarge his experience in a big mine with modern survey equipment. Good positions were offering in several mines but, having set his sights on The Zinc Corporation Limited, Mawby accepted a lesser post with this company because it had good prospects, was ahead in its technical operations, and seemed to offer the best opportunity for varied experience. The Zinc Corporation was a London-based company with international connections, and its Australian mine was managed by Bewick Moreing and Company, who also managed mines in Western Australia and Queensland.

In 1928 Mawby was engaged by the Zinc Corporation as a timberman at the princely sum of £4.7s.6d. a week, but on reporting for duty on 12 March he was made a surveyor's assistant on a ventilation survey. Neither the company nor Mawby could have realised what a significant appointment this was, for the history of the company and that of Maurice Mawby became inextricably connected. Consequently some company background is needed.

The Zinc Corporation was registered in Melbourne in 1905 to treat the zinc-bearing tailings at Broken Hill. In 1911 the company, having decided to acquire a producing mine, secured the leases of Broken Hill South blocks, and the Zinc Corporation was reconstituted with its head office in London: later other leases were acquired. In 1915 the Zinc Corporation joined with Broken Hill South Limited and North Broken Hill Limited to acquire a controlling interest in the Port Pirie smelters of The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP), leading to the formation of Broken Hill Associated Smelters Proprietary Limited. (In 1925 BHP sold its remaining interest, and by 1945 the Zinc Corporation's interest had increased to 50 per cent.)

After only three months on the ventilation survey, Mawby took part in an investigation of the ore reserves, at that time under water, of the Lake George Mine at Captain's Flat, New South Wales. The survey occupied some six months, after which he worked on a metallurgical treatment of the ore at the Minerals Separation Company in Melbourne, the aim being to produce, by flotation, separate concentrates of lead, iron, and zinc.

On completion of this assignment, Mawby returned to the Zinc Corporation at Broken Hill as a junior surveyor. He referred to this as 'one of the most stimulating positions that I have ever held', and 'a wonderful experience with wonderful associates, and a fine body of men'. G.R. Fisher (now Sir George Fisher) was chief surveyor, and S.M. Moline and C.W. Kayser (later manager of the Emperor Mine in Fiji) were also junior surveyors. In those days surveyors were responsible not only for preparing plans and overall surveying, but also for calculating contract rates, designing underground timbering, ore chutes, and rail layouts, and conducting ventilation surveys-in fact the whole gamut of mining engineering. This range of experience was to serve Mawby well.

In 1935 he became assistant mill foreman. In 1936 the Zinc Corporation took over the management and direction of its Australian operations from Bewick Moreing. The prices of lead and zinc were very low, hovering around £10 a ton; staff changes were impending, and Mawby seriously considered whether he should leave Broken Hill to seek experience elsewhere. He was persuaded to stay, to become mill foreman with a view to succeeding J.C. Lyster as mill superintendent within 12 months.

The Zinc Corporation was keen to develop an 'all-flotation' plant to replace the efficient but complicated system of jigs and tables followed by flotation. Mawby welcomed the challenge of all-flotation, which had defeated the Broken Hill companies. After preliminary work an all-flotation plant with a capacity of 30 tons an hour was built adjacent to the main mill, with provision for returning the products of the experimental plant for further treatment. On the basis of the results obtained, a new all-flotation mill was designed and built, and was commissioned in August 1939.

This was Mawby's most significant direct contribution to metallurgical innovation at Broken Hill. It is described in his thesis on the evolution of the all-flotation process at the Zinc Corporation, for which he was awarded the Fellowship of the Sydney Technical College in 1937. A paper describing it was published in the Proceedings of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

The decision to scrap the Zinc Corporation's large and costly gravity-based concentration plant was strongly supported by the experimental evidence. Mawby stated, 'We had operated the all-flotation plant in parallel with the gravity-flotation plant for several years and were in a position to assess the economics of both processes'. He then listed ten advantages of all-flotation, not least of which was that 'the direct milling costs due to lower labour, power, and maintenance charges would be about one shilling (1941 currency!) per ton lower in the all-flotation plant'.

It was about 1935 that Mawby first met W.S. Robinson, the dynamic mining industry figure of the 1930s and the war years. As managing director of the Zinc Corporation, Robinson had come to Broken Hill on a fact-finding and policy-determining mission. After many years of close association, Mawby said, 'W.S. Robinson was one of the very, very great Australians, a man of real humanity, real appreciation of the role of the working man in industry, and I always regarded myself as being probably more influenced by him than any other man'.

Robinson was keen to investigate the ore potential south of the mine. The original geological work in the district was done in 1910 by the members of the defunct Geological Sub-Committee of the Scientific Society of Broken Hill. This was followed by E.C. Andrews and associates (1920-22), W.I. Turner (already mentioned, 1926-27), and E.J. Kenny (1928-32). Until 1934 no geologists were employed by any of the companies in Broken Hill, and geological mapping was carried out by the surveyors. However, the mining engineers of the day had successfully developed the mine orebodies by systematic exploration and drilling. Robinson thought that the situation justified the application of all available geological knowledge, experience, and expertise in the search for more ore. Geophysical work indicated that there was a good chance of the main lode continuing for a considerable distance, so the leases for some two miles south were acquired. When drilling penetrated the zinc lode and proved the continuance of the lead lode, the outlook was so promising that a subsidiary, New Broken Hill Consolidated Limited, was formed in 1936. (Mawby was to become its first manager, in 1944.)

Mawby's first overseas visit came in 1937-38, when he accompanied George Fisher on a world tour that lasted some ten months. Their reports on mining and metallurgical operations in North America, Europe, and Africa did much to help the subsequent design of the Zinc Corporation's underground and metallurgical operations.

Concern for the employee

The expansion of the Zinc Corporation and the birth of New Broken Hill in the mid-1930s had a favourable impact on the lives of the miners and the townspeople of Broken Hill. Ore reserves sufficient for half a century gave a sense of security and confidence.

In his book If I Remember Rightly, Robinson (1) describes the situation in which Mawby grew up:

When I entered industry in 1914 I was struck by the care devoted to inanimate power and the carelessness displayed to man power. The machine was carefully selected on expert advice, submitted to severe tests and splendidly housed. It had an army of attendants to feed it, to keep it in constant repair, and to polish it...No attention was paid to housing, or to transport to and from work, or to feeding or hospitalisation, or educational facilities for a man's children or amenities for his wife. The contrast shocked me. As soon as possible I introduced the slogan, 'At least as much care for the man as for the machine'...

The directors of Zinc Corporation were the first to recognise that Broken Hill was not just another mining camp but was rather the heart of a great group of industrial enterprises. From the mid-1930's working and living conditions were steadily transformed. In some projects we worked alone but in others we enlisted the cooperation of other big mining companies...

Broken Hill came to provide a model of industrialism for all to see. But it is fair to point out that great things are only possible when the foundations of a mining industry rest on great reserves of profitable ore. They are also possible only when the men recognise that without the help of much capital and skilled management there can be no regular employment and few if any amenities, and when the directors and management realise that all the ore on the field is not worth a pinch of salt unless the men can be got to work efficiently.

Mawby had wagged school during the big strike and had seen baton charges and mounted police herding people in the streets. He understood the problems of the miners and the reasons for the bitterness that persisted, and when he entered management he consciously adopted Robinson's philosophy that the prosperity of the mines was inextricably bound to the prosperity of the miners.

People mattered to Mawby, and not just as producers. Good working conditions and safety were important, but so too were living conditions and leisure facilities. Whole families were essential for stability and permanence in remote areas, so the welfare of wives and children was as important as that of the men themselves. Housing equalled city standards, swimming pools and like amenities were built, fare subsidies were provided for secondary school students, and seaside holidays were encouraged. Mt Tom Price, Dampier, and Bougainville set high standards, but in negotiating industrial agreements Mawby recognised a responsibility not to set precedents that others could not afford to match.

Mawby maintained contact with a wide range of friends around the world. One of the things that attracted him to mining was its international outlook. 'People', he said, 'are the basis of the mining industry: the technical part is secondary.... Mining engineers don't worry so much about politics and nationalities, mining transcends all boundaries.'

Wartime activities

At the start of World War II the Allies were short of metals. Australia, which feared it could be cut off from overseas supplies, had lead and zinc but was short of copper and aluminium. In 1940 the Commonwealth Government set up the Copper and Bauxite Committee. Mawby, as its technical secretary, visited many mineralised areas to assess their potential. Copper had to be 'scrounged' (Mawby's word), and mines like Captain's Flat in New South Wales and Rosebery in Tasmania, which produced lead and zinc concentrates containing copper, were soon producing copper concentrate. Mt Isa was producing lead and zinc but, although traces of copper had been found, no one suspected that Mt Isa would become one of the great copper mines of the world.

There was drilling for bauxite in Tasmania and New England. The great deposits at Weipa were not discovered until later; because the Japanese were in Port Moresby, northern Australia was excluded from exploration activity. However, during the war the Commonwealth and Tasmanian Governments jointly agreed to establish an aluminium works in Tasmania.

The Copper and Bauxite Committee later became the Commonwealth Minerals Committee under the chairmanship of Colin Fraser. Mawby was a member from 1941 to 1944, and in this capacity was concerned with the development and production of such strategic metals and minerals as copper, tungsten, tin, tantalite, and beryl. He became acquainted with almost every known Australian mineral deposit. With P.B. Nye, who later became director of the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Mawby assessed the important scheelite deposits on King Island. Scheelite, the source mineral for tungsten, was vital because of the tungsten capping on anti-tank shells.

Titanium was also in demand. The beach-sands industry originally operated in a small way along the eastern coast, making a mixed heavy-minerals concentrate that was sent to America for separation; before the war ended Australia was producing its own concentrates of rutile and zircon. Later, Australia was to supply 90 per cent of the world’s rutile.

In 1942 Mawby was a member, with Frank Green and Arthur Evans, of a government-sponsored mission to the United States and Canada to study lead and zinc metallurgy. He spent considerable time at the Pittsburgh Consolidated Company, a large owner and operator of coal mines, investigating the possibilities of beneficiating the high-ash coals of the New South Wales south coast. He also investigated up-draft sintering, as carried out by the American Smelting and Refining Company, and the de-bismuthising of lead as practiced in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Australia was not as polarised then as it is today, and the war created a situation in which most people of Mawby’s age and interests came together. Spending much of his time in Canberra, he made enduring friendships that were to be of great advantage when he resumed full-time activities with the Zinc Corporation, and later again when the company conducted negotiations with the Commonwealth Government.

Despite the demands of these extramural activities, in 1944 Mawby became the first manager of New Broken Hill Consolidated Limited, as well as chief metallurgist of both the Zinc Corporation and New Broken Hill Consolidated.

Post-war career – The Zinc Corporation and CRA

Mawby had an inquiring mind that needed a challenge and in 1945, at the age of 40 and with experience in all phases of Broken Hill mining and metallurgy, he felt that the time had come to broaden his knowledge. From the positions offered, he accepted appointment as director of research and development of The Broken Hill Associated Smelters Proprietary Limited (BHAS) in which, as stated, the Zinc Corporation had a half interest. Here was the opportunity to familiarise himself with the final treatment stage of lead concentrates. The appointment, based in Melbourne, involved visits to smelters throughout the world. However, it was not long before Robinson realised that a company having but one mine must seek new mineral deposits, and he invited Mawby to return to the Zinc Corporation as director of exploration and research. With the blessing of BHAS, who regarded him as 'a W.S. man', he accepted.

Thus Mawby rejoined the Zinc Corporation in 1946 and 'went looking for mines' – a job after his own heart. Exploration has always been the main challenge of mining, for without new ore there can be no continuity. General exploration was at a low ebb, so this was a unique opportunity, and it ushered in the most productive period of Mawby's life. The Zinc Corporation was not seeking small deposits; its new mines had to be of national significance, mines that would catalyse the opening up of new areas of Australia.

The first steps were to assess the known mineralised areas, to consult state departments of mines and geological surveys, and even to examine mineral collections in the hope that somewhere there would be encouraging signs for real exploration work. Many of the old areas such as the Cloncurry field, the New England areas, Mount Morgan and its environs, the Victorian mineralised areas, and the Flinders Ranges were re-investigated.

This assignment proved extremely rewarding, both to Mawby and to the Zinc Corporation. Over the next 20 years world-scale deposits of bauxite, copper, and iron were discovered, and the company's future no longer depended solely on the silver/lead/zinc reserves at Broken Hill. Development of the new mines required massive capital and a great deal of planning. Later promoted to leadership of the Australian operation, Mawby used his technical and organisational skills to bring them into production.

There were other less important projects, some of which are still in existence and some of which have been discarded. The beach-sands industry was then in its infancy. Mawby was responsible for the investigation and subsequent mining of the Stradbroke Island deposits, and in 1948 Titanium and Zirconium Industries Proprietary Limited was formed to develop them. However, his overseas colleagues were unconvinced that the industry had a great future, either for its minerals or for the metals made from them, and in 1969 the company's interest was sold.

It is seldom appreciated that Mawby was a pioneer in oil exploration. In 1946 the Zinc Corporation joined with two experienced overseas oil companies, D'Arcy Exploration Company Limited (later British Petroleum) and the Vacuum Oil Company (later Mobil Australia), to search for natural gas and oil, first in the southwestern corner of the Great Artesian Basin and later in the Otway Basin of Victoria. (At the time most overseas petroleum experts were firm in the view that oil and gas were unlikely to be found in Australia in commercial quantities, and only one other company – Oil Search – was operating here.) The three companies became equal partners in the exploration company, Frome-Broken Hill Company Proprietary Limited, in 1947. Oil exploration is an activity in which good fortune is imperative for success, and it was one of Mawby's major disappointments that, despite some early encouragement, his company failed to discover a commercial field. However, his optimism for Australia has been vindicated by later discoveries of commercial oil and gas fields.

There was an unexpected bonus as a by-product of the search for oil. A memorandum that Mawby wrote in June 1953 stated: 'Please issue instructions to all field geologists that, apart from the search for base metals, they should keep an eye open for possible deposits of other minerals, particularly bauxite and phosphate, which may occur in many places in the Northern Territory and possibly Cape York Peninsula...' Though oil was the prime objective of the Cape York Peninsula survey, the big breakthrough came in 1955 with the discovery of the Weipa bauxite deposit, which itself pointed the way to several other significant bauxite discoveries, such as that at Gove.

Australia could not provide the necessary development finance. Mawby said: 'Mining in those days was a dirty word. You could not get the sort of money you wanted even if you went around the world with a hat in your hand.' Nevertheless, that is precisely what he did. At first he received a polite 'no' from many of the world's major mining and metallurgical companies. Following a three-year association with the British Aluminium Company, in 1960 a firm partnership was established with the Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation of the United States. This paved the way for the rapid development of Comalco Industries Proprietary Limited as an integrated aluminium complex, based on Weipa, Bell Bay, Yennora and Gladstone, and expanding overseas with interests in an alumina refinery in Sardinia, an aluminium fabrication plant in Hong Kong, and an aluminium smelter at Bluff in New Zealand.

Mawby always had a special identification with Weipa. Not only had he explicitly reminded his staff of the possibility of bauxite in northern Australia, but after the discovery he also supported and guided its development, stage by stage, into one of the world's largest bauxite/alumina/aluminium enterprises.

Haddon F. King, a close associate from 1946 until Mawby's death, believed they were fortunate to belong to an organisation in which exploration was seen not merely as the key to growth and profit, but also as a duty. A geological staff of world standard was built up from zero in 1946 to 40 in 1960, and it was during those years that CRA developed the activities, the skills, the investigational curiosity, and the geological concepts that led to the successes of the 1950s and 1960s. Mawby's long-range view made disappointments easier to accept; an abortive test was not a waste of money, it was merely part of the cost of developing mineral resources. Optimism and judgment at first, and experience later, provided justification; and poor times were no excuse for cutting back the effort.

King, looking back after nine years of retirement from CRA, said, 'There are two things that I specially like to remember about Maurie's part in exploration – that during the 1950s, when I as Chief Geologist and another senior geologist were developing unorthodox geological ideas which were regarded by the eminent as mistaken and even deplorable, I never felt any pressure to conform; and that, even when Sir Maurice was Chairman of CRA, a visiting field geologist could have an hour of his time on almost any day.'

In 1949 there began a series of management changes that were to influence Mawby's career. A merger in Britain of the Zinc Corporation and the Imperial Smelting Corporation resulted in the formation of the Consolidated Zinc Corporation Limited (CZC) and an Australian subsidiary, Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Limited (CZP). In 1950 Sir Norman Mighell (former High Commissioner in London) became chairman of CZP, and in 1951 the management of the Zinc Corporation, New Broken Hill Consolidated, and some other Australian interests were transferred from London to Australia. Mawby was appointed vice-chairman of CZP in 1955, and in 1956 was made a director of CZC. In 1956 L.B. Robinson (W.S. Robinson's son) became chairman of CZC and at the same time, following Mighell's death while still in office, took over chairmanship of CZP. On the death of L.B. Robinson, in July 1961, Mawby succeeded him as chairman of CZP.

The year 1962 was a crucial one for Mawby, then in his late fifties. CZC merged with the powerful Rio Tinto Company Limited of London, a company with worldwide ramifications, to form The Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation Limited (RTZ). Alfred Baer, recalled from retirement on the death of L.B. Robinson to become chairman of CZC, became chairman of the new company; Val Duncan of Rio Tinto became managing director, and Mawby became a director. At the same time Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia Limited (CRA) was formed by merging the large CZP with the smaller Rio Tinto Mining Company of Australia Limited, a publicly listed company whose main asset at that time was a majority shareholding in Mary Kathleen Uranium Limited. In Mawby's picturesque language, CZC 'had lots of deposits, lots of work ahead, lots of development and limited money, and they [Rio Tinto] had lots of money and no projects'. RTZ regarded CRA as an operating company concerned with the technical problems of mining and exploration. Mawby, the undoubted technical leader of CZP, had long been in the mainstream of development, and had the ideal background for his appointment as Chairman of CRA.

'Sir Maurice had a rare grasp of technical subjects and pursued matters in which he was interested with the dedication and curiosity of the true scientist', said Sir Roderick Carnegie, who succeeded Mawby as Chairman of CRA in 1974. Throughout a lifelong association with mining, Mawby demonstrated his faith in exploration and research, actively supporting both and backing promising ideas wherever they originated. His receptive attitude encouraged a stream of innovative studies by CRA, including the DAVCRA flotation cell, the WORCRA continuous smelting methods, various forms of ore sorters, and the successful Imperial Smelting process for lead and zinc. Such is the nature of research that not every one of these studies proved rewarding.

Mergers are not without difficulties, but by 1964 the whole organisation cemented into place and the individuals were becoming welded into a well-integrated and effective team. At the outset CRA had to rely heavily on the business experience, financial acumen, and marketing ability of RTZ to supplement the technical expertise, exploration skill, and enterprise of the Australian group. Nevertheless Mawby hoped that CRA would eventually play a bigger part in defining the overall policies and in making important development decisions.

After the establishment of Comalco in l960, the next two major areas of expansion were in iron and copper. Rio Tinto Mining had been investigating iron ore in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in 1961 and, following the amalgamation with CZP, continuing exploration resulted in the discovery of a massive iron orebody at Mt Tom Price in 1962. Hamersley Holdings Limited was formed in association with the Kaiser Steel Corporation of the United States, and only recently (in August 1979) has CRA acquired the Kaiser shareholding. A huge open-cut mine was established with mechanical mining and loading facilities, and a railway was constructed to Dampier, 290 kilometres northwest of Mt Tom Price, where a port and loading facilities were provided. Townships were built at the mine and at the port (and later at Paraburdoo,100 kilometres south of Mt Tom Price). This was a tremendous achievement requiring close coordination. The first shipments were made in 1966, and 23 million tons were produced during 1971. The mine at Paraburdoo began producing in 1973.

In 1964 CRA began exploring a large low-grade copper/gold orebody on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, and in the early stages Mawby was determined that exploration should be kept going. Bougainville Copper Proprietary Limited was incorporated in Papua New Guinea in 1967. Progress thereafter was fast and spectacular, and by 1972 the first concentrates were shipped. The island population has been integrated into the project, and the Government of Papua New Guinea has been substantially dependent on the royalties and dividends received.

The Hamersley iron and Bougainville copper stories are so well known that it is unnecessary to deal with them at length. There were other, less publicised, projects, during Mawby's chairmanship – commissioning of new slag-fuming and electrolytic zinc plants at BHAS in Port Pirie, establishment of Dampier Salt on the northwest coast, and studies of the open-cut coal prospect at Blair Athol in Queensland. There have been substantial reorganisations and rationalisations between CRA and other companies with respect to copper smelting, coal and coke production, and zinc and lead smelting. Further, in 1974 the decision was made to re-open the Mary Kathleen uranium mine.

Mawby had a sense of urgency, even impatience, and the unprecedented speed with which major projects were brought into production almost simultaneously testifies to his drive and organising ability. From his twenties onwards he had been a good manager with a belief in delegation and in sharing credit. He had the gift of being able to choose the right person for a particular job, and his colleagues say that, having chosen, he provided encouragement without interference. He did not suffer fools gladly. He was impatient with accounts and administrative procedures and long erudite discussions; these were not his style. His principal 'back-stop' was Arthur Rew – the administrator and finance man – who also spent many years in Broken Hill and held the positions of general manager of CZP and later managing director of CRA. They formed a truly great team and worked together very harmoniously for almost thirty years.

When Mawby retired in 1974, CRA had become second only to BHP among Australian companies. Exploration was proceeding apace, and there was momentum enough for an exciting future. It had 23,000 employees, its sales revenue was $833.5 million, and its dividends ($36.1 million) took less than a quarter of the money paid to governments in royalties and taxation ($166.9 million). Yet Mawby took pride not so much in the size of the company as in the multiplicity of its contributions to the development of Australia. Looking back, one can only marvel at his courage and enterprise; he might have chosen to play safe. Though he had risen dramatically from the lowly days of boyhood in Broken Hill, Mawby remained an unassuming man.

Sir Roderick Carnegie said: 'One of Sir Maurice's greatest attributes was his ability to lead and to be well liked in the process. He generated enthusiasm in others in leading them towards common objectives, instilling a team spirit in those whom he led.'

Mawby, the mineralogist

Mawby was a noted mineralogist whose prowess first became apparent at the Junction North mine. A keen observer and a skilful analyst, he identified for the first time a remarkable number of the rarer minerals among the 150 species known to exist in the silver/lead/zinc lodes in Broken Hill. The minerals he first identified are alabandite, native antimony, apophyllite, augelite, bustamite, coronadite, inesite, jarosite, manganocolumbite, meneghinite, microlite, palygorskite, purpurite, pyroxmangite, sturtite, and tetrahedrite. A fine personal collection, part of which adorned his office, included many lead and silver specimens from the unique oxidised section of the great Broken Hill orebody.

In collaboration with mineralogists in Australia and overseas, Mawby characterised and described many other minerals in the Broken Hill lode and surrounding host rocks. He worked closely with such eminent Australian mineralogists as George Smith and T. Hodge-Smith, Drs A.B. Edwards, John McAndrews, E.S. Simpson, and F.L. Stillwell, and Professors L.J. Lawrence and R.L. Stanton. He also worked with overseas greats like Foshag, Schaller, and Mason at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Professor Ramdohr of Heidelberg, Germany, and Professors Berman, Frondel, and Palache at Harvard University.

Mawby has not been commemorated in the name of any mineral – colleagues say because of his modesty. He loved minerals, but he shunned the limelight. For this reason there was little publicity when he donated his world-class collection of minerals to the National Museum of Victoria.

He was patron of the Mineralogical Society of Victoria, and in 1978 Dr Peter Bancroft, director of the San Diego Gem and Mineral Society in California, delivered the first Sir Maurice Mawby Memorial Lecture, entitled 'The World's Finest Minerals and Crystals', in Melbourne.

Australian Mining and Smelting Limited is commissioning a memorial volume to Mawby, provisionally entitled The Minerals of Broken Hill, with Dr Howard K. Worner and Professor John F. Lovering as joint editors.

Contributions to the mining and minerals industries

Mawby felt an obligation to support and advance his profession by active participation in the various associations of the mining and minerals industries. In particular he made important contributions to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Australian Mineral Industries Research Association Limited, and the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories.

The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1923 notified Mawby of his election as a student member and asked for 'a postal note for l0s 6d as annual subscription'. Thus began an association that lasted for more than half a century. A member of the Institute's council in 1948, Mawby was vice-president 1950-1952, president in 1953-54, vice-president again from 1955-63, and president once more in 1968. He did a great deal during his terms of office to motivate the institute and to set high standards. Two presidential addresses – 'The Torch we Hold' (1954) and 'The Standards we Inherit' (1968) were notable.

The highest award of the Institute, its Bronze Medal, was made to Mawby in 1955. He was delighted and proud that the presentation was made at Broken Hill during the 1956 annual conference by the president, A.R. West, a classmate at Broken Hill Technical College. West was able to say of him, 'Equally at home in the fields of mining, metallurgy, geology, exploration, research, education and Government, Mr Mawby has been able to provide a liaison and stimulus whose value to the Institute and Industry can hardly be overstated. At the age of fifty-one his career is far from closed, but the Council of the Institute unanimously feels that it is time now to recognise Mr Mawby's already eminent services to mining and metallurgy.'

In 1976 the Institute conferred honorary membership on Mawby 'in recognition of his valuable services to science and industry'. The address by the president, C.H. Martin, and Mawby's reply reveal his great love for Broken Hill, his high regard for his colleagues, and the extraordinary versatility and breadth of interests that enabled him to play such a significant part in the affairs of the Institute.

Mawby was a member of the organising committee and chairman of the publications committee of the Fifth Empire Mining and Metallurgical Congress which was held in Australia in 1953, and during the latter part of the congress he was acting president. He was president of the Eighth Commonwealth Mining and Metallurgical Congress, which was held in Australia and New Zealand in 1965. For each of these congresses an authoritative volume, Geology of Australian Ore Deposits, was published by the Institute; Mawby was closely associated with both.

The exploration programs of the 1960s had greatly expanded geological knowledge, and Mawby saw in the imminent retirement of C.L. Knight from CRA an opportunity to have the earlier volumes updated and to extend their scope to include Papua New Guinea. A committee was set up in 1972, with Mawby as chairman and Knight as editor-in-chief, to compile a third edition – the fourth-volume Economic Geology of Australia and Papua New Guinea, published by the Institute in 1975. These volumes are a memorial to Mawby's vision and energy. But the Institute has yet another tribute to pay. It is in the process of preparing a memorial volume, provisionally entitled Mining and Metallurgical Practices in Australia, to which G.B. O'Malley will contribute a chapter on Mawby's technical career.

In the 1950s there was no appropriate body to back research for the mineral industry. This situation was rectified in 1959 by the formation of the Australian Mineral Industries Research Association Limited (AMIRA) after meetings between the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments to consider the offer of the South Australian Premier, Sir Thomas Playford, to hand over the Technical Services Section of his Department of Mines for the joint use of the industry, the Commonwealth and the State. It was decided that the section should be reconstituted as the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories (AMDEL) to provide a comprehensive contract research service for the benefit of the mining industry. Mawby was elected first president of AMIRA, a momentous decision. He was also elected to the AMDEL council.

The first task of AMIRA was, in association with the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments, to underwrite the operation of AMDEL. Mawby's personal approaches won guarantees of work or cash to the value of £45,000 a year for five years. Always a champion of AMDEL, Mawby arranged for it to carry out much of his own company's metallurgical work.

The objectives of AMIRA are very broad, and once the AMDEL guarantee system was successfully launched, AMIRA extended its activities by disseminating technical information and sponsoring within the universities and the CSIRO research projects of general interest to the industry. AMIRA's first annual report in 1960 mentions three such projects – geobiological research into ore genesis, non-destructive testing of mine hoisting ropes, and the application of XRF spectrography to the analysis of ores. Twenty companies and several state mines departments had joined in the sponsorship of these projects. Mawby did not favour a levy on members for general support of research; he fostered a system whereby each member decided whether or not to support a particular proposal.

AMDEL had a remarkable growth rate during the 1960s, and in 1968 Mawby was instrumental in raising $220,000 from AMIRA members for new buildings. His sincerity and his belief in the value of research greatly stimulated support from the minerals industry. By 1969 membership numbered 53, and included exploration, cement, and chemical companies in addition to mining and smelting companies.

At the annual conference of The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1969, Mawby presented an impressive address entitled 'The Australian Mineral Industries Research Association – A Decade of Progress', in which he reviewed the projects undertaken and acknowledged the great satisfaction that he had derived from helping to sponsor cooperative research within the mineral industry. Academic research, he thought, was handsomely supported by the mining companies through the taxes they paid. Excerpts define his broad philosophy regarding industrial research:

Little or no research is conducted in industry in general and the minerals industry in particular which does not have a chance of improving the profitability of operations, or providing an economic gain in one form or another, directly or indirectly, short-term or long-term. I do not apologise for this, just as I do not apologise for the fact that the primary objective of industry as a whole is profit in its widest sense. Persons, companies and Governments must at least balance their budget some time and it is only through the surpluses that credit ratings can be assessed. These in turn determine the potential capital or loan raisings without which progress is halted and stagnation intervenes. In other words, the profit incentive defines the broad environment in which industrial Research and Development has to work...but I do not want you to think that profit is the only incentive. There are many others, which will become apparent as I describe some of AMIRA's activities...There are a number of areas of concern to mining companies where the human problems heavily outweigh all other considerations. Projects of this type in which AMIRA is involved are the safety of mine hoisting, underground ventilation and the conditions in communities of which a mine is the focal point.

AMIRA prospered under Mawby's leadership, and he was persuaded to continue as president until 1972 – a term of thirteen years. AMIRA was then a most successful organisation with a modus operandi unique in Australia. It had become accepted by government, by universities, and by industry as the coordinating body and spokesman for minerals research in Australia. The Mineral Industry Research Organization in the United Kingdom, and the Australian Engineering and Building Industries Research Association both used AMIRA as a pattern.

When CRA became a prime target for criticism as one of the largest 'foreign' companies, Mawby was forced into the postition of spokesman for the entire industry. He was no apologist. Although he was a dedicated Australian, he was convinced that a very large amount of overseas capital was needed to develop world-scale deposits of lead/zinc, copper, bauxite, and iron ore. 'We have to set about fitting them into the world pattern of markets and usage, because no foreseeable growth in domestic markets would alone have provided an adequate base for developing such large resources.' Foreign money, he said, was just as important in mining as it had been in constructing railways and building up manufacturing industries. He told the Federal Government that he would accept 'anybody's money' because it would develop Australia, and unless the north were developed we wouldn't hold it. However, he envisaged less dependence in the long term, and his company practised what he preached; the Australian public's equity in CRA has steadily increased. Expatriated profits, Mawby pointed out, were a minor matter compared with the gains that accrue. Australia's limited technical manpower and the time needed to develop new technology frequently made it economical to import know-how. With overseas capital comes overseas expertise, but by research and good operating practice Australia could make improvements, and indeed had contributed to the international pool of knowledge from which it had drawn.

In Optima (September 1971) Mawby set out his vision of 'The Way Ahead for Australian Mining'. Australia's growth had been closely linked to the development of its mineral resources; the winning of metals had taken an increasingly important part in national life and had influenced politics, unions, laws, and racial policies. Not only had mining been Australia's greatest force for decentralisation, but in industrial centres business had been stimulated and employment had been stabilised. The effect of mining fanned out into all sectors.

Mawby was highly critical of Britain's entry into the Common Market, and the progressive weakening of the links between Australia and Britain. Within Australia, he opposed government control in the mining industry, and the policies of the Whitlam Government were an anathema to him. He felt that Australia lost its way in the early 1970s, but if he were here today he would find that some of the principles he espoused are returning to favour.

In his Optima article, reacting to what he considered was unfair criticism of the mining industry, Mawby wrote, 'The mineral industry should adopt a policy of optimising processing, maximising local equity participation, and minimising pollution.... The mining industry aims to establish and maintain the right balance between preservation and development and does not seek blanket approval to conduct uncontrolled operations. The decision, however, on whether or not ecological and environmental considerations should take precedence over natural resource development is one that society must soon make...The problems are more than just technological...The solutions must be technically sound and they must be socially, economically, and politically feasible.'

Mawby, always intensely interested in conservation, was one of the founders of the Australian Conservation Foundation. However, he was keenly disappointed when, in his words, it 'became more interested in generating controversy than in encouraging better environmental practices'.

Other activities

The key to Mawby's life was Broken Hill. There he first met George Fisher when the latter was gaining underground experience and Mawby was 'a very bright young star' at the technical college. From 1928 they worked in close association for many years and they became lifelong friends. Fisher has said, 'In our young days we spent much of our leisure time together and every available weekend was spent in the bush prospecting and hunting...we ranged from Tibooburra to Mt Gunson...and thought we were going to make our fortunes, with gold at Tibooburra and copper at Mt Gunson.' They held the Mt. Gunson deposit until wartime requirements necessitated a transfer. They were successful in the development of a sillimanite deposit in the Thackaringa hills that produced a substantial tonnage, and they were very interested in amblygonite, a lithium mineral, at Euriowie. When Mawby received one of the two Gold Medals of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, London, in 1963, the other recipient was Fisher.

As a young man Mawby played competition tennis. He also enjoyed swimming and later adopted it as a regular form of exercise. He was a great reader with catholic tastes; he was also a confirmed diarist and a prolific correspondent. He liked the theatre and played the piano as a hobby (by ear, for he had no formal training). In later life Mawby did not participate in any organised sport. Nevertheless, like many another town-dwelling mining man, he sought relaxation at times at the racecourse; he even owned a race-horse. He continued to follow his interests as a naturalist.

The important contributions to AMIRA, AMDEL, and the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy have been reviewed. A strong supporter of the formation of the Australian Mining Industry Council in 1967, Mawby was a member of its steering committee and a foundation member of the executive committee. He was a life member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, and between 1962 and 1972, as a member of the faculty of engineering at the University of Melbourne, rendered valuable assistance behind the scenes. He did much to foster trade and cultural relations with Japan, and sought to improve the understanding between the two nations by encouraging Japanese studies in Australia. He was a life member – the first – of the Australia/Japan Business Cooperation Committee.

For several years from 1956, Mawby was a member of the advisory council of the CSIRO and a member of its Victorian state committee. One of the CSIRO's major successes has been the discovery that trace elements – copper, zinc, molybdenum, and cobalt – could bring prosperity to certain unproductive farming areas. His keen interest in things that grow and knowledge of this research probably influenced his purchase in 1956 of 6,300 acres of virgin mallee scrub near Keith in South Australia for development as a grazing property – Noranda Station. There was no certainty that the venture would be successful, but Mawby accepted the challenge with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, and it turned out well. His son bought an adjoining property in 1967. A notable Aberdeen Angus stud, a Murray Grey stud, and a Merino stud were established. Mawby liked to visit the property at least monthly. It gave a respite from business activities and afforded him plenty of scope to follow his instinct for developing a project from conception to production. And there were financial benefits too.

Mawby was a perfectionist, and his favourite quotation, his son says, was, 'If something is worth doing it's worth doing well.' Family, friends, and colleagues have repeatedly referred to Mawby's great capacity for enjoyment. He did enjoy living – his family, his work, his hobbies; in fact all the pleasures of life.

Honours

In 1955 Mawby was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) of the New South Wales University of Technology (now the University of New South Wales). In 1956, as mentioned, he received the Bronze Medal of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 'in recognition of his contribution to exploration and to non-ferrous metallurgy, and also of his continuous public services in many directions associated with mining and metallurgy'.

Appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1959, four years later he was created a Knight Bachelor 'for services to mining and industry'.

The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers elected him an honorary member in 1963 'for outstanding contributions to the world lead and zinc mining industry and for his able and constructive services in developing the raw material resources of Australia'.

In 1969 Mawby was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 1970 he was awarded a Kernot Memorial Medal of the University of Melbourne 'in recognition of his distinguished engineering achievement in exploration, research and development in the mining and metallurgical industry in and beyond the continent of Australia, and also of his interest in education, and his concern for the preservation of the environment'. The Victoria Institute of Colleges, at a special ceremony in 1975, conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Arts and Sciences (Honoris Causa) for 'services to the development of the mining industry in Australia'. Mawby supported the establishment of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, of which he was a foundation member; he was a signatory to its articles of association.

Summing up

For Fellows elected under the provisions of the Academy Bye-Laws (Special Election of Fellows), there will rarely be a long list of personal research papers. Their impact on science will have taken a different course. Let there be no doubt that Mawby had a profound and wide influence, through the use of science and the scientific method, on the operations of a whole group of companies. At a time when control was passing into the hands of financiers, accountants, and powerful shareholders, his performance as a manager demonstrated the benefits of having a technical man at the helm - provided that man is wise enough (as Mawby was) to ensure that among his colleagues there are skills complementary to his own.

Mawby was by nature and inclination an entrepreneur. Once a new venture was achieving cost and production targets it received less of his time and interest. Ahead there was always more exploration, more research, and more development – something more to be added to the already long list of notable achievements – New Broken Hill, Weipa, Gladstone, Mt Tom Price, Paraburdoo, Dampier, Bougainville, Bluff, and others. In all these developments CRA blazed a trail.

We all like to look back occasionally. Who among us could lay claim to more than Mawby, who said, 'I get a tremendous thrill from seeing new harbours, and ports, and towns, and mines growing where none grew before; seeing the establishment of roads, railways, airfields, and integrated communication systems that open up the Australian emptiness...meeting the challenge of doing something that will endure and be of real benefit to Australia.'

Sir Maurice was confident about the future of mining in Australia, and considered himself 'the luckiest man in the world' to have found his true vocation. When he received a certificate of honorary membership of The Australasian Insitute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1976, he said, 'Summing it all up, if I had my life to live again, I would wish no other than that which I have had in the same localities with the same people.'

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.5, no.1, 1980. It was written by:

• Sir Ian Wark, who was Chief of the CSIRO Division of Industrial Chemistry from 1939 to 1958, a member of the CSIRO Executive from 1961 to 1965, and Chairman of the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Advanced Education from 1965 to 1971. He was elected to the Academy in 1954, and was Treasurer from 1959 to 1963.
• Eleanor Ellis, who was Sir Ian's assistant at the CSIRO Division of Mineral Chemistry.

Acknowledgments

It is fortunate that Sir Maurice had been interviewed by Mel Pratt for the National Library of Australia regarding major events in his career, and that this was taped. There is another tape, held by CRA, on which he recounted some of his earlier contribution to mining and metallurgy. Reference material used in the preparation of this paper has been deposited with the Academy.

CRA colleagues have given much appreciated assistance. In particular, Sir Roderick Carnegie and Miss Brenda Scougall – Sir Maurice's secretary for twenty-eight years – have been most helpful. Dr J.C. Nixon provided much of the information concerning AMIRA and AMDEL, and Dr H.K. Worner provided the information concerning Sir Maurice's contributions to mineralogy.

There were valuable discussions with Lady Mawby and Mr Colin Mawby, to whom the sympathy of the Academy is extended.

Notes

• (1) No apology is offered for references to W.S. Robinson (himself a Fellow of the Academy from 1954 until his death in 1963), for without him it is doubtful whether Mawby could have achieved so much.

Written by J.H. Carver, R.W. Crompton, D.G. Ellyard, L.U. Hibbard and E.K. Inall.

Introduction

With the death of Professor Sir Mark Oliphant, the first President of the Australian Academy of Science, Australia lost one of its most distinguished scientists. A tall, handsome man with a shock of white hair and a distinctive voice and laugh, he was well informed on a wide range of scientific matters and expressed firm views on their social consequences. He enjoyed wide respect throughout the nation as a great Australian, his influence spreading far beyond the discipline of physics, to which he made seminal contributions both through his own research and his leadership. The Academy will remember and honour him for his leading role in its establishment, and for his continuing association with it until the last years of his long life.

Oliphant's outstanding international reputation was based on his pioneering discoveries in nuclear physics in Cambridge in the 1930s and his remarkable contributions to wartime radar research and to the development of the atomic bomb. In 1950, after an absence of 23 years, Oliphant returned to Australia, where he founded the Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian National University and pioneered the creation in Canberra of a national university dedicated to the conduct of research at the highest international level.

To the layman, Mark Oliphant was well known for his often outspoken comments on those matters about which he felt so strongly: social justice, peace, atomic warfare, the environment, academic freedom and autonomy, to name a few. The scientific community will remember him as a physicist for his pioneering experiments with Ernest Rutherford during momentous years that saw the birth of nuclear physics, as a physicist/engineer for his ingenuity and determination as one of the pioneers of high-energy particle accelerators, and as a science administrator and public advocate for science.

The early years in Adelaide

Marcus (he later called himself Mark) Laurence Elwin Oliphant was born on 8 October 1901 at Kent Town, an inner suburb of Adelaide, the first-born of the five sons of Harold Oliphant and Beatrice Oliphant (née Tucker). Harold (known as 'Baron' within the family) had eventually followed his own father's footsteps and become a clerk in the South Australian public service. Beatrice had been a schoolteacher. With a small income for such a large household, the family lived carefully, with moves from one rented house to another as its number grew.

Mark began primary school at Goodwood at the age of 8, but not long afterwards the family moved to Mylor in the Adelaide Hills, which was, for Mark, a delightful place in which to grow and learn. There he attended a one-teacher school with about 25 students. The master, Mr McCaffrey, was 'an Irishman and a marvellous teacher' whose influence, Mark later asserted, had been part of the backbone of his education. In 1914, a move back to the Adelaide suburbs became necessary when the time came for Mark to attend secondary school, first Unley High School and then, for his final year, the premier public school in the State, Adelaide High School.

Mark's scholastic achievements at high school gave little inkling of the distinguished scientific career to follow, but his inventiveness and his remarkable ability to 'make and do' blossomed during these senior school years and provided evidence of talents more predictive of his future research performance. Both schools were the beneficiaries of these talents. Accompanying an application in 1918 for a position with the Advisory Council of Science and Industry (a predecessor of CSIR) was a list of complex apparatus and delicate instrumentation Mark had constructed for his own and the schools' use. The list included a Wimshurst machine, Tesla coil, Kelvin's quadrant electrometer, Kelvin's reflecting galvanometer, organ pipe, siren, automatic tuning fork and more – an amazing list of achievements for a student of 17 who would have had very limited facilities at his disposal.

Whether or not these talents would have flourished under any circumstances, there is no doubt they were greatly encouraged by one of his most precious possessions at that time, his own underground 'laboratory' at the family's new home in Mitcham. It was his alone for study and experimentation and was given to him when the family moved to its new home when he was about 12. By that time he had already shown a remarkable aptitude with his hands, a skill he retained and honed throughout his life. During these formative years Mark responded to complementary influences from his parents. He inherited his strong sense of social justice and morality from his father, who was a deeply religious and sensitive man, although dogmatic religion, including Christianity, became anathema to him. From his mother came a love of reading and learning and a practical approach to life. Both clearly encouraged his inquiring and inventive mind as evidenced by the 'holy of holies' reserved for him in the Mitcham house. Nothing would have pleased his father more if he had elected to enter the Anglican priesthood, although Mark's early aspirations leant towards medicine. In the event it was to be neither.

Mark left school in 1918, all of his secondary schooling having been spent during the years of the First World War. Tertiary education without financial backing from the family was open to very few, certainly not to him. He did not win one of the twelve State Government bursaries then offered (still the only 'free' tertiary education available until after 1945), so he looked for a job. He worked for a time for an Adelaide jeweller and applied unsuccessfully for a number of other positions. Eventually he obtained a cadetship at the South Australian Public Library. The work was uninspiring, but it did at least enable him to take a couple of subjects at the University of Adelaide at night, and thus, in 1919, to cross the threshold of his academic career.

Chemistry and physics soon captured him. Then, in his second year of part-time study, an opportunity arose which was undoubtedly a turning point in his life. He accepted a cadetship in the Physics Department under Professor (later Sir) Kerr Grant, thus giving him not only free tuition and a minute income but also an intimate connection with the department and its academic staff of three. Since his first year physics result was undistinguished, it is not clear how he obtained the position. Kerr Grant may have been aware of Oliphant's ingenuity and facility with apparatus, and seen an opportunity for skilled help with the lecture demonstrations for which Kerr Grant was renowned. Whatever the reason, Mark flourished in the job, taking out a First Class Honours degree in physics in 1923.

As Kerr Grant's 'laboratory assistant' (so recorded by the university's 1926 Calendar) Mark Oliphant's stature in his employer's eyes steadily grew. In a letter to the chairman of the university's finance committee, which sought increases in Oliphant's salary over two years to £400 a year, a sum approaching that of a Lecturer, Kerr Grant wrote:

Such a man as Mr Oliphant, who understands and can handle the great variety of instruments and apparatus of a physics laboratory, is more essential to the working of this department than a mere assistant.

Kerr Grant's recognition in that same letter of Mark's 'remarkable technical skill' explains why he wanted to exploit his talent to the full rather than use his other talents only on the more routine tasks of lecturing and demonstrating. The records show that he did in fact do both, teaching at all levels of undergraduate physics.

The offer of the cadetship was Oliphant's first break. The second came when Kerr Grant took sabbatical leave in 1927 and Mark then became responsible to the acting departmental head, R.S. (Roy) Burdon. Kerr Grant had a brilliant mind and inspired his students, Mark included. With great enthusiasm, he initiated research on numerous topics that interested him, but often could not pursue them to conclusion. Burdon's approach was different and, through careful research, he became highly respected for his work on surface tension, a project that Oliphant had joined earlier.

Oliphant and Burdon continued their collaborative work on mercury surfaces, a line of investigation suggested earlier to Burdon by Kerr Grant and with which Oliphant had been assisting Burdon. Their work led to joint publications in Nature, Transactions of the Faraday Society and to Mark's first solo publication in Philosophical Magazine. Undoubtedly, it was this work that played a significant part in securing for Oliphant one of the 1851 Exhibition scholarships for 1927, satisfying as it did one of the criteria of the award that the candidate should possess 'proven capacity for original work'. Burdon had often expressed his high opinion of Oliphant's experimental ability in later years; Kerr Grant's was enthusiastically expressed in his letter of support to the commissioners for the scholarship:

Mr Oliphant possesses, in fact, an altogether unusual aptitude for the technical side of physics and a remarkable gift for manipulation...While I thus emphasize [his] ability and experience in the field of practical physics I do not wish to give the impression that he is a mere technician. On the contrary, his knowledge of theoretical physics is both wide and thorough – as his interest is strong – and amply sufficient to guide him in the choice of problems for research...As proof of his interest and capability in theoretical physics I may mention that in letters received from him since my departure (on sabbatical leave)...he tells me that he has been reading the very difficult papers of Schrödinger and others on the new 'Wave mechanics' of atomic processes.

The award of the prestigious and valuable '1851' enabled Oliphant to realise an ambition to work with the New Zealand-born Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, then Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. The ambition had had its origin some two years earlier when Rutherford had briefly visited Adelaide en route from New Zealand and Mark had been 'electrified' by him. That year, 1925, was a momentous year for him. Not only did it mark his first encounter with the man who had the most profound influence on his scientific career and with whom he was to make his greatest scientific contributions, but it was also the year in which he married his beloved wife, Rosa Wilbraham, who was to be his companion for more than sixty years.

Rutherford's aura had an immediate impact on Oliphant. According to his later accounts '[Rutherford's] work fascinated me, and I determined that I would work under him, if this was at all possible'. It was now possible, and late in 1927 Mark and Rosa left Adelaide for England and Cambridge. It was to be 23 years before they returned to their homeland permanently.

Cambridge

Oliphant arrived in Cambridge in October 1927. Having already secured a place in Trinity College, he sought a meeting with Rutherford to propose a research programme that he had prepared. Although his proposal may not have been of direct interest to Rutherford, it would have interested his predecessor, J.J. Thomson, who was still working in the Cavendish Laboratory at that time. Recounting that first interview later, Oliphant wrote:

I told him of my wish to do some work on the effect on metal surfaces of bombardment by positive ions, if he thought that would fit well into the program of the laboratory, and I handed him a paper I had written on the adsorption of gases on a freshly prepared surface of pure mercury. He went over the proposal and agreed that I should do as I wished.

This topic was certainly of interest to Thomson, whose beneficial influence Oliphant freely acknowledged. Oliphant and Thomson worked as near neighbours in the laboratory and Oliphant gained confidence in his own experimental skills from his first sight of Thomson's apparatus, which convinced him that he 'could do better glass-blowing than J.J.'s assistants were able to accomplish'.

Oliphant's PhD thesis displayed his ingenuity and dexterity in constructing apparatus. In scale, his experiments were more ambitious than those of his Adelaide days, but still small compared with the work he began with Rutherford in 1932. The experiments were mainly concerned with the impact of positive ions on metal surfaces. Calling on his experience with mercury surfaces in Adelaide, Oliphant took extreme care in the preparation of his metal surfaces, adopting meticulous vacuum and surface preparation techniques. Two years after presenting his research plan to Rutherford, Oliphant submitted his PhD thesis on The Neutralization of Positive Ions at Metal Surfaces, and the Emission of Secondary Electrons, and was awarded the degree in December 1929.

Oliphant completed his PhD at a time when the staff of the Cavendish Laboratory, led by Rutherford, were famous for their fundamental discoveries about atomic structure and their pioneering development of the new science of nuclear physics. Oliphant delighted in the exalted scientific company in which he found himself. The following list of Nobel Prize winners (by year of award) shows the remarkable strength of the Cavendish staff of the 1930s: J.J. Thomson (1906); Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry, 1908); Francis W. Aston (Chemistry, 1922); Charles T.R. Wilson (1927); James Chadwick, Rutherford's deputy (1935); Edward V. Appleton (1947); Patrick M. Blackett (1948); John D. Cockcroft (1951), who became Oliphant's life-long friend and a future Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU); Ernest T.S. Walton (also 1951); and the ebullient Russian, Pyotr ('Peter') L. Kapitza (1978), founder of the 'Kapitza Club' discussion group.

Oliphant shared a room in the Cavendish Laboratory with P.B. (Philip) Moon, who later joined him in Birmingham. Following his PhD work, Oliphant had a brief foray into isotope separation, his interest then being to determine which of the isotopes of potassium was radioactive. Although he soon moved from isotope separation to transmutation by accelerated particles, the techniques that he learnt were crucial to his work with Rutherford on the disintegration of lithium under proton or deuteron bombardment and, later, in the separation of the isotopes of uranium.

In the history of the Cavendish Laboratory, 1932 is often called the annus mirabilis, when major new discoveries made it possible to explore the atomic nucleus using the model that had been proposed by Rutherford long before he was appointed to the Cavendish Chair. Led by Rutherford, the staff of the Cavendish Laboratory began to lay the foundations for the new science of nuclear physics.

Chadwick's discovery of the neutron, an uncharged particle of similar mass to the proton, confirmed Rutherford's suspicion (or long-held vision) that the nucleus was made up, not of protons and electrons, but of protons and neutrons. Nuclear structure was explored in more detail by Cockcroft and Walton, who showed how to break open the nuclei of 'light' target elements such as lithium and boron to release showers of particles such as protons and helium nuclei that were smaller than the nuclei of the target elements. To do that, Cockcroft and Walton had bombarded the nuclei with streams of protons accelerated to great speeds by high electrical voltages. The 'particle accelerator' they built for this purpose was a sign of the future of nuclear physics, in which new discoveries would depend less on the 'string and sealing wax' for which the Cavendish Laboratory was noted, and more on applications of heavy electrical engineering.

Rutherford was none too enthusiastic about the new methodology but nevertheless quickly recruited the inventive and technically adept Oliphant to design and build a similar machine on which the two of them could work together. Assembled in a basement, Oliphant's accelerator used lower voltages than Cockcroft and Walton's, but higher currents, which provided a greater flux of protons to bring about the 'splitting' or 'disintegration' of the atomic nucleus. Oliphant and his research team were soon able to confirm what Cockcroft and Walton had found.

In the summer of 1933, the Cavendish Laboratory obtained a few drops of the precious 'heavy water', newly discovered by the American chemist G.N. Lewis of the University of California at Berkeley. Heavy water contained 'heavy hydrogen', the nucleus of which held a neutron as well as a proton. A team of physicists at Berkeley, led by E.O. (Ernest) Lawrence, had begun to use the heavy hydrogen nuclei, which they called 'deutons' (later to be called 'deuterons') to bombard light nuclei as Cockcroft and Walton had first done with their linear high-tension accelerator. The Berkeley team used Lawrence's recently invented cyclotron to accelerate the projectile particles by sending them many times around a circular track and adding an energy increment with each circuit.

Oliphant and Rutherford were soon using deuterons (which the Cavendish Laboratory called 'diplons') in similar experiments, with the particles as both missiles and targets (replacing ordinary hydrogen in certain compounds), but the plentiful disintegrations yielded puzzling results. The Berkeley team saw them as well, and argued that the deuterons were unstable and broke up on impact. At the Cavendish Laboratory they thought differently, arguing that when two deuterons collide, they momentarily fuse into a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) before breaking apart again into two previously unknown particles. Some disintegrations yielded a hydrogen nucleus with two neutrons (hydrogen-3, ³H) plus a free proton, others a helium nucleus with only one neutron (helium-3 , ³He) plus a free neutron. Neither ³H nor ³He had previously been known to exist, but proof enough was provided by the Cavendish experiments to convince the Berkeley team. Correspondence between Lawrence and Oliphant on this research was the beginning of a friendship that was crucial in the coming war years.

The early 1930s were the most productive of Oliphant's career as a pure researcher in nuclear physics, but his recognition of the investment needed to make further experimental advances in nuclear physics was a sign of things to come. With a reputation established by two versions of the 'basement' accelerator, Oliphant was set to work by Rutherford overseeing the building of two new high- voltage machines (the famous HT1 and HT2 sets) that were paid for by a gift from Lord Nuffield. Rutherford saw the money as more trouble than it was worth; others, however, including Oliphant, knew that big and expensive equipment was the only way forward.

Oliphant and Rutherford carried out fundamental work on nuclear transmutations. They had complementary talents, with Oliphant's inventiveness and technical skills matching Rutherford's seemingly inspired knowledge of possible nuclear processes. Oliphant's research achievements at the Cavendish Laboratory are summarised in the following citation supporting his election to the Royal Society of London:

[Oliphant is] distinguished for his experimental researches on the action of positive ions on surfaces and for his contribution to our knowledge of transmutations. [He] has been active in the design of high voltage apparatus for the production of swift positive ions and has taken a responsible part in experiments which show that two new isotopes, hydrogen three and helium three, were produced by the bombardment of deuterium by deuterons. He has made an accurate study of the modes of transmutation of lithium, beryllium and boron by the action of protons and deuterons, and determined the masses of the light elements.

Oliphant was elected to the Royal Society in 1937. His work on nuclear reactions with the isotopes of hydrogen and helium was particularly important and forms the basis for the production of nuclear fusion energy, which is still one of the holy grails of energy research. At the time of his death, Oliphant was by far the longest-serving Fellow of the Royal Society, having carried the honour for over sixty years.

In 1935, Chadwick left the Cavendish Laboratory, having accepted the Chair of Physics at the University of Liverpool. In his place, Oliphant was appointed Assistant Director of Research and became Rutherford's deputy for experimental work throughout the Cavendish Laboratory. He was also a Fellow of St John's College, with a share in the annual College dividend, and a College Lecturer, earning fees for tutorial and other teaching duties. Taken together, the various income strands provided a comfortable living for Mark and Rosa that was well above the near penury in which they had lived in their early days in Cambridge. Mark's research achievements had been rewarded, but no amount of financial success could make up for the loss of their three-year-old son, Geoffrey, who had died of meningitis in 1933 while Mark was travelling in Europe with his father.

One by one, the old Cavendish team was moving on. Chadwick had gone to Liverpool, Blackett to London and Kapitza was back in Russia. Rutherford's successor would be another Nobel Prize winner, W. Lawrence Bragg, eminent in solid-state physics rather than the inner workings of the atom. Cockcroft was still there, but the central role of the Cavendish Laboratory in nuclear physics was beginning to pass to others, notably Lawrence's team in Berkeley.

Birmingham

Oliphant had done excellent work with Rutherford in Cambridge but, like so many others from the old Cavendish Laboratory, he wanted to 'run his own show' and, in 1937, despite Rutherford's strong initial objections, Oliphant accepted the Poynting Chair of Physics at the University of Birmingham.

Oliphant moved to Birmingham in early autumn of 1937 but, within weeks of his arrival, Rutherford died, suddenly and unexpectedly, from the effects of hernial damage resulting from a fall from a tree in his garden in Cambridge. Oliphant heard the news in Italy while attending the Galvani Bicentenary celebrations. He felt keenly the loss of the man who had had such a great influence on his own career.

In his new surroundings in Birmingham, Oliphant was determined to continue the Cavendish tradition of research in experimental nuclear physics. He had bargained hard with his new employers to boost the resources supporting research, but he was planning to build the largest cyclotron in Europe and much more money would be needed. With support from the new Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, whose family had strong links to the University – the Chamberlain Tower dominated the campus landscape – Oliphant and his supporters gained the patronage of Lord Nuffield, maker of the popular Morris cars. Nuffield provided a sum of £60,000 (ca A$4 million today), enough for the cyclotron, a building to house it and a trip for Oliphant to Berkeley to see Ernest Lawrence.

Oliphant had met Lawrence, the second of the 'two Ernests' who were such an influence on him, only once before, in 1933, at a meeting of the Kapitza Club. They had, however, been in close correspondence in connection with the Cambridge experiments using heavy hydrogen. Oliphant visited Berkeley in December 1938. He and Lawrence had much in common and became good friends. Lawrence generously offered help with the Birmingham cyclotron, which would be a close copy of the one he was then building in Berkeley, and his staff, notably Don Cooksey, provided advice and copies of blueprints of their machine.

With massive resources at his disposal, Lawrence made rapid progress. His new cyclotron was on-line late in 1939, producing 10 MeV (million electron volt) protons, and the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics crowned his year. Oliphant saw in the award a vindication of the efforts he and others were making to develop new methods to accelerate particles. He wrote to Lawrence in November:

...the Prize shows that the technical side of the subject is now recognised as of equal importance to the advances that follow from the use of these techniques and, more important, I hope, than the theories which attempt to explain them.

Oliphant's year had not gone so well. War had broken out in September, with his machine well short of completion. Delays had piled up, including those resulting from an accident when two of his team had legs crushed by a falling steel plate. Many of his senior colleagues were indifferent to his plans, and more and more of his time was spent away from the project, dealing with crucial matters of national defence.

Radar

The defence matters concerned what was known at the time as RDF (Radio Direction Finding), which became 'Radio Location', and is now universally known as 'Radar' (radio detection and ranging). Since 1935, a growing team of scientists and technicians, working in secret, had taken RDF from a simple principle to a network of radar stations called Chain Home, dotted along the south and east coasts of Britain, able to detect approaching aircraft. They were also a source of mystery to the local public. The system, however, was unreliable and seriously in need of development and refinement.

Oliphant was made privy to the secret in the autumn of 1938. He was soon to realise that the limitations of existing RDF were largely attributable to the wavelengths of the radiation used, 10 metres or more. Finding ways of generating powerful radio waves of a metre or less in wavelength were needed, ways that might also allow the production of equipment small and lightweight enough to be fitted into aircraft.

Existing magnetrons were low-power laboratory devices, as were the klystrons recently invented by Stanford University scientists. Oliphant used his visit to Lawrence to learn more about generating useful amounts of power at very short wavelengths.

In the last months before the outbreak of war, John Cockcroft took charge of recruiting more than 80 physicists from universities across the country, including Oliphant and others from the old Cavendish network, to bolster research on RDF. Oliphant led his team of eight or ten, all from Birmingham, to a Chain Home station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, to discover more about how RDF worked and how to make it work better.

When war was declared, the team moved back to Birmingham, a few at a time. Oliphant then succeeded in securing for the team a contract from the Admiralty to identify or invent the best possible generators and detectors of microwaves. He broke his team into groups, each with different responsibilities. He and James Sayers concentrated on improving the design of the klystron and by early in the following year had produced a new style of klystron producing about 400 watts (W) at a wavelength of 7 cm.

In the meantime, two members of his team, J.T. (John) Randall and H.A.H. (Harry) Boot, worked on the primitive magnetron. From unpromising and frustrating beginnings, they went back to first principles and, in November 1939, produced plans for a new form of magnetron, the 'resonant cavity' magnetron. Oliphant obtained some further funding from the Admiralty to build a demonstration model. On 21 February 1940, the first model, crafted from a solid block of copper, poured out half a kilowatt at a wavelength of 9.8 cm, right on target. By June 1940, the first sealed-off cavity magnetrons were available for use in RDF sets that could detect aircraft and surface ships. Rapid improvements increased the power to 25 kW pulses, making it possible for an airborne set to detect the periscope of a submarine. Subsequent 'strapping' of the cavity magnetron by Sayers increased the power to 50 kW. The General Electric Co. had assisted in its refinement and the operational testing was handed over to the RDF development teams at Swanage and elsewhere.

The power of the klystron did not equal that of the cavity magnetron, but continued improvement of design produced reliable, robust, compact klystrons that were essential for the local oscillators in the heterodyne microwave receivers of the signals reflected from the target.

Thousands of magnetrons and klystrons were produced by the radio valve manufacturers in England and then in the United States, where the designs, which had been provided from England, were further improved for use in American-produced radar sets. Oliphant himself relayed much of the detailed information on the design and production to America. He crossed the Atlantic several times in the bomb bays of aircraft, his only provisions being the packs of sandwiches that Rosa had cut, a thermos of coffee, and a bundle of blankets.

Oliphant's influence, overall, was immense. He inspired the various groups of his team and gave them their leads. He made the contacts, found the funds and resources, and led the whole team on a dozen projects with passion, vigour and an endless supply of good ideas, many of which worked. The pace of work was furious, especially when war came, but he remained with them totally immersed in the task.

The fall of Singapore in February 1942 prompted a swift reaction in Oliphant. He, like others, saw Australia as under threat from the advancing Japanese and he immediately arranged to return home. The move was hasty and unrewarding, if well intentioned. The trip by troopship took two and a half months, but did reunite him with his family, whom he had sent to Adelaide early in the war for safety. The worst of the blitz now over, they returned to England together, with the journey by sea lasting four months!

The atomic bomb

A number of widely reported pre-war experiments had raised the possibility that energy stored in uranium atoms could be used to produce a bomb of unprecedented power. Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, working in Berlin, had studied transmutations produced by neutron bombardment of the elements. Generally, as had been shown by Enrico Fermi, neutron bombardment led to the formation of the element with the next highest atomic number, but the results obtained by bombarding the heaviest element, uranium, could not be understood simply in terms of formation of transuranic elements. Following Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, Meitner, an Austrian Jew, fled to Holland and then to Scandinavia. Hahn, Meitner and Strassmann continued their collaboration by correspondence. When Hahn tried to explain their uranium work in terms of transuranics, Meitner insisted on re-examination of the experimental results, which showed that barium, not radium, was the main transmutation product. She suggested that the whole uranium nucleus had been split by neutron bombardment, with a massive release of stored nuclear energy. Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, gave the first theoretical account of this process, which they called 'nuclear fission'.

By April 1939, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, in Paris, had shown that an average of three neutrons were left over from each fission, able, at least in theory, to stimulate other fissions and so begin a chain reaction. Oliphant, aware of these developments, turned his attention to the possibility of releasing large amounts of energy by the fission of uranium.

Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls were émigrés from Germany who had been invited by Oliphant to come to Birmingham, where Peierls was appointed to the new Chair of Applied Mathematics. Frisch had made outstanding personal contributions to understanding the fission process. Because of their foreign origin, they were excluded from participation in the secret radar programme, but not from work on nuclear fission, nor, indeed, from consideration of the practicality of constructing nuclear weaponry. The presence in Birmingham of both Frisch and Peierls greatly strengthened the fission work that Oliphant now wished to encourage.

Two major questions needed to be answered to decide if an atomic bomb could be built. Would the chain reaction be fast enough to be explosive and, given that some neutrons would always escape, what critical mass of uranium would be needed to sustain the reaction? Initial calculations and experiments indicated that with natural uranium the reaction would be so slow that the critical mass would be measured in tonnes. The military value appeared to be minimal.

Oliphant's old Cavendish roommate Philip Moon had joined the staff at Birmingham after a time at Imperial College with G.P. (George) Thomson (son of J.J.), trying without success to start a chain reaction in uranium. Oliphant used his RDF contacts at the Air Ministry to secure one ton of uranium oxide that allowed Moon to continue this work, but results remained negative.

Natural uranium consists of a mixture of ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U, with only the lighter isotope, ²³⁵U, being fissionable by slow neutrons. In a crucial memorandum, Frisch and Peierls proposed 'enriching' the uranium by increasing the proportion of ²³⁵U. They calculated that a chain reaction in only a few tens of kilograms of fully enriched uranium would be violently explosive, equal to hundreds or even thousands of tonnes of TNT.

Oliphant used his contacts to bring the Frisch-Peierls memorandum to the attention of Whitehall, notably Sir Henry Tizard, Chief Scientist to the Air Ministry. The British effort to build an 'atomic bomb', initially code-named M.A.U.D. and later 'Tube Alloys' or 'TA', arose from their proposal.

Oliphant reached back to his Cambridge work on potassium in an effort to separate the uranium isotopes using electromagnetism. Elsewhere, other methods were being tried, but it was soon clear that the massive effort needed to build the bomb was beyond hard-pressed Britain. The necessary technical and industrial resources lay in the United States, where Albert Einstein, spurred by Leo Szilard, had already tried to alert the US Government to the threat that Germany might have the weapon first.

During his 1941 visit to the United States to promote 'strapping' the magnetron, Oliphant was shocked to find that work there on the atomic bomb appeared to be at a standstill, with crucial reports from M.A.U.D. lying unread. His response was typical; he stirred up his good friend and collaborator Ernest Lawrence, who in turn convinced key people in US science and government of the need for action. The British atomic energy group eventually transferred to the USA and Canada. Oliphant took his team of mostly Birmingham people to Berkeley to work on electromagnetic separation of isotopes with Lawrence's people. This work helped produce the bomb that was to level Hiroshima. Oliphant's skilful and determined arguments, and his friendship with Lawrence, were important factors in the establishment of the Manhattan Project. He was deeply concerned that any delay in the Project could increase the risk that Germany might build the first atomic bomb; and he was both a persuasive speaker and a persistent advocate. When told, for example, that insufficient high conductivity copper was available to wind the coils for the electromagnetic separators, Oliphant succeeded in convincing the US Treasury to release 14,000 tons of silver from Fort Knox, to be used instead of copper!

The 'peaceful' atom

By mid-1945, Oliphant was back in Birmingham, looking to tasks beyond the war. His attitude to the atomic bomb at the time was clear. Writing to Manhattan Project Director, General Leslie Groves two weeks before the weapon was first tested, he said:

If the imminent first step proves as successful as I believe it must, we will see a complete vindication of the faith of those of us who have fostered this revolutionary undertaking and, incidentally, a great demonstration of the practical value of academic nuclear physics.

He was less enthusiastic after Hiroshima. After favouring a non-lethal demonstration of the weapon's power (as had a number of the other Project scientists), he was horrified by its use against civilians, and thereafter actively opposed the military use of nuclear power. His activities inevitably brought him into conflict with the authorities, whose perception of him may lie behind an apparent refusal of a visa to visit the United States in the early 1950s.

International control of nuclear weapons was one of the most important problems facing the newly formed United Nations (UN) in 1946. Australia's Prime Minister, J.B. Chifley, on a visit to England at the time, invited Oliphant to join the Australian delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), led by Dr H.V. Evatt, the Australian Minister for External Affairs. Oliphant welcomed the opportunity to participate in the resolution of an issue about which he held strong views, and joined George Briggs of CSIR as a technical adviser to Evatt.

Oliphant also (like Bertrand Russell, Cockcroft, Blackett and many others) became a zealous champion of the 'peaceful atom', publicly endorsing a vision of a future transformed by cheap nuclear power from the atom. He contributed to advancing its cause when he led the Australian delegation to the first UN Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in 1955 and 1958. In time though, his attitude changed, as the many issues surrounding nuclear power emerged.

Oliphant's membership of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs provided him with a less formal but nonetheless influential forum in which to express his strongly held views against war of any kind. As one of the 22 founding members of Pugwash, comprising eminent scientists drawn from 10 countries, many Nobel Laureates among their number, Oliphant found a group with which he formed strong kinship. Founded in 1957 at the height of the Cold War, it had as its proclaimed aims the

...bring[ing] together, from around the world, influential scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems. Meeting in private as individuals, rather than as representatives of governments or institutions, Pugwash participants exchange[d] views and explore[d] alternative approaches to arms control and tension-reduction with a combination of cando[u]r, continuity, and flexibility seldom attained in official East-West and North-South discussions and negotiations.

Both its aims and its modus operandi appealed greatly to Oliphant's strong attraction to internationalism and his desire to cut through hypocrisy and cant based on nationalism and political alignment.

Following the inaugural conference in 1957 in Canada, entitled Appraisal of Dangers from Atomic Weapons, Oliphant attended seven other conferences during the next twenty years, preparing or presenting papers at many of them. In 1967 he was one of the organisers of the first South-East Asian Regional Pugwash Conference in Melbourne.

In 1995, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, in two equal parts, to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and to Joseph Rotblat, the Conference's most prominent member.

Oliphant's involvement in, and enthusiasm for, Pugwash illustrates one of his passionately held views, namely his opposition to war. Whether or not this often- expressed opposition resulted from his horror at the first use of the bomb he helped develop, he described himself in later life

as a belligerent pacifist, who recognises that violence and inhumanity cannot be banished from human behaviour by passive means, but must be suppressed by universal law and order which is rigidly enforced in the interests of justice for all.

It was a theme to which he often returned.

In later years, the thought of hydrogen and deuterium as power sources intrigued Oliphant, both through nuclear fusion (using the reactions he had discovered more than twenty years before at the Cavendish Laboratory), and as a chemical fuel in a 'hydrogen economy'.

In 1980, Stewart Cockburn, one of Oliphant's biographers, found among declassified secret records in the United States National Archives in Washington, a citation for the conferring on Oliphant of the highest award that can be granted to foreigners by the US Government, namely, the Congressional Medal of Freedom with Gold Palm. The award was proposed for Oliphant's brilliance in conceiving, developing and perfecting the cavity magnetron (an incorrect attribution), his 'outstanding contributions in the development of the atomic bomb' and his immeasurable contribution 'to the success of the Allied war effort'. Oliphant was not apprised of the proposed award. Other archival material revealed that the Australian Government of the time could not agree to the acceptance by Australian citizens of awards of another Government. Thus, the proposed award was cancelled.

Return to Birmingham

Back in Birmingham, with the war not quite won, Oliphant resumed his work on particle accelerators. In 1939, with funding from Birmingham University and Lord Nuffield, he had commenced the construction of a 60-inch cyclotron that was very similar in design to Ernest Lawrence's accelerator in Berkeley. The construction of this machine, which would be the largest cyclotron in Europe and the second largest in the world, was, in itself, a major project for the University.

Simultaneously with resuming construction of the cyclotron, Oliphant considered other types of particle accelerator that might provide higher energies than could be obtained using cyclotrons alone. He was particularly interested in the proton synchrotron, a radically different particle accelerator, which had been suggested independently during the war by Oliphant and by E.M. McMillan in the USA and by V.I. Veksler in the Soviet Union. No detailed design studies had been made, but the principle of the proton synchrotron was to confine the particles to a fixed orbit by varying the magnetic field as batches of particles were accelerated. At the same time, the frequency of the applied accelerating electric field had to change in such a way as to maintain synchronism with the accelerating particles, and to compensate for relativistic effects. The restricted path meant that the circular pole pieces of the cyclotron could be replaced by a ring of magnets, with a great saving in materials and costs.

Oliphant was the first to request and receive funds to construct a proton synchrotron. In January 1945, while still in the USA, he requested funds from Tube Alloys (the UK uranium project) to construct, in England, a 1 GeV (or 1000 million electron volts) proton synchrotron. By July of that year, £200,000 had been allocated for his synchrotron project, an immense sum in postwar Britain. Oliphant justified the spending on the grounds that the new understanding of nuclear physics that the machine would bring might open up new sources of energy.

In the immediate postwar period Oliphant attracted a number of Australian and New Zealand research students to work with him in Birmingham. One of these was John Gooden from Adelaide, who arrived in Birmingham in 1946 and was very interested in the proposed new particle accelerator. Other early recruits to Birmingham who had a long-term involvement with Oliphant's accelerator projects included J.W. (Jack) Blamey from Melbourne, L.U. (Len) Hibbard from Sydney, and W.I.B. (Wibs) Smith from Adelaide. Gooden had worked on radar research at CSIR in Sydney during the war and began to work with Oliphant on detailed synchrotron designs. They made good progress with these studies and, by 1947, Oliphant was able to undertake to construct the world's first proton synchrotron in Birmingham. The Birmingham synchrotron would, at 10-second intervals, accelerate protons to an energy level of 1 GeV, or one hundred times the maximum energy of existing cyclotrons. At the same time, work continued on the construction of the Birmingham cyclotron.

Birmingham or Canberra?

With his Chair in Birmingham and his well-established laboratory on the international conference circuit, as shown by the distinguished attendance at the Birmingham 1947 International Theoretical Physics Conference, Oliphant would seem to have been ideally located to participate in the postwar expansion in nuclear and particle physics research. His reputation as one of the world's leading accelerator physicists, together with the facilities he was constructing in Birmingham, would have given him a central position in the rapidly developing field of high-energy particle physics. Moreover, during the war he and his research groups had made major contributions to the development of the magnetron for airborne radar and to the initiation of research on the atomic bomb. Taken together with his earlier research in nuclear physics, particularly his work with Rutherford on nuclear reactions among the isotopes of hydrogen and helium, Oliphant was ideally placed to lead a well-equipped laboratory carrying out experimental research at the forefront of modern physics.

All this had not gone unnoticed, and Oliphant now faced a dilemma. His eminence as a research director led to his receiving a number of tempting offers at this time, including a recommendation from Cockcroft for the Jacksonian Chair of Physics in Cambridge, an offer of a tenured post with Lawrence in Berkeley, and the founding Directorship of the ANU Research School of Physical Sciences. His scientific achievements and leadership prowess would have impressed any search committee.

The possibility of attracting Oliphant back to Australia was being discussed in Canberra, where H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs, Douglas 'Pansy' Wright, Alfred Conlon and others were planning a national research university that would, in the words of the 1946 ANU Act, 'provide facilities for postgraduate research and study both generally and in relation to subjects of national importance to Australia'. The university, at least initially, would contain four research schools, including one in medical research, one in physical sciences and two in the social sciences. Coombs and his fellow planners sought advice about the scope and structure of the research schools from distinguished Australian expatriates who were well established in leading overseas institutions, mainly in the UK, and who might, as directors, provide leadership for the new research schools. Coombs asked Harrie Massey, a distinguished Australian theoretical physicist at University College London, for advice about a research school of physical sciences that concentrated on theoretical problems. Massey was not enthusiastic about this proposal since he considered that, in the postwar period, the most interesting opportunities for major scientific advances were in experimental rather than theoretical physics. Consequently, if the research were to be mainly limited to theoretical topics, it would be very difficult to create a research school at international standards in the physical sciences. Massey suggested that an approach should be made to Oliphant but warned that, if Australia wished to attract leading scientists in Oliphant's field, it would need to provide adequate resources, including expensive laboratory facilities like those in the USA and Europe.

Coombs arranged for Oliphant to meet Australian Prime Minister Chifley in 1946 when Chifley and his advisers were in London for the first postwar Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting. The meeting was of great importance for the ANU. It began with a 'walk in the park', followed by dinner at the Savoy Hotel attended by Massey, Coombs, Dr H.V. Evatt and other members of the Prime Minister's party. Oliphant, we are told, was at his spellbinding best. He spoke about the atomic bomb and the strategic implications of a world dominated by nuclear weapons. He was enthusiastic about the peaceful uses of nuclear power, especially the benefits of unlimited sources of energy for nuclear desalination. He foresaw Australia at the forefront of nuclear research. Oliphant told Chifley that, for the first five years, he needed £500,000 or more to set up the type of physics school he had in mind. This was more than four times the amount originally suggested to Cabinet, but Chifley told Coombs 'If you can persuade Oliphant to head the school we will do whatever is necessary'. Oliphant was enthusiastic about Chifley's attitude towards the new university and agreed to join Howard Florey, Keith Hancock and Raymond Firth on the ANU Academic Advisory Committee in the United Kingdom.

Of the four advisers, only Oliphant accepted the appointment as founding Director of his School. In his 50th year, he had to face the dilemma of choosing between remaining in Birmingham, with its partly complete accelerators, and founding a new nuclear physics laboratory in Canberra with sufficient government support to be internationally competitive. In the end, he chose to accept the ANU appointment.

Oliphant was convinced of the benefits of nuclear research to Australia and encouraged by the level of official support for the new university laboratory. In later years, he frequently recalled Florey's warning (given at Tilbury when farewelling Oliphant in 1950) that going to Canberra would be committing scientific hara-kiri and that all he would find in Canberra would be a 'hole in the ground and a mountain full of promises'. But any decision to take the easy option and remain in Birmingham would have been totally out of character for Oliphant. Extending the metaphor of Florey's warning, Oliphant's move to Canberra meant that he would need to establish a new laboratory on a bare ridge in an almost empty campus within a town that had no significant high technology industry.

From 1946 to 1950, when he became Director, Oliphant tapered off his direct involvement with the Birmingham synchrotron and was increasingly concerned with the design of the proposed Canberra accelerator and with planning, staff recruitment and administration of the new research school.

Oliphant and his family moved to Canberra in 1950. Although the Birmingham synchrotron was not yet finished, Oliphant considered that all critical decisions had been taken and 'the rest was detail' that could be settled in his absence. After his departure, the Birmingham project was delayed by problems in the motor generator set, the anchorage of the pole tips and an electrical short in the magnet windings. These faults ('details') were easily fixed but the delays were such that, despite starting two years earlier, the Birmingham machine did not reach its designed 1 GeV until July 1953, a few weeks after the US 'Cosmotron' reached 3 GeV.

Canberra

The Research School of Physical Sciences

Oliphant was both founding Director of the School and leader of the group that conducted the School's major projects. His plans to build in Canberra one of the world's biggest particle accelerators dominated the expenditure of the School's funds. At a time of postwar shortages, buildings, workshops, stores, and technical services had to be established from scratch to support research over a wide range of the physical sciences. Oliphant's projects also brought to the School a number of experienced technicians, some of whom had worked with him in Cambridge and Birmingham. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the Research School was being set up, there was an acute shortage of experienced technical staff throughout Australia, and the continued recruitment of technical staff from overseas was required.

In addition to leading the work of his own group in high-energy accelerator physics, Oliphant, as Director, expanded the work of the Research School to include astronomy, mathematics, geophysics, theoretical physics, atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics and particle physics. Under his leadership, the Research School became a major centre for Australian research and postgraduate training in the physical sciences. Oliphant was a generous manager and his 'one man rule' enjoyed the strong support of the academic staff, most of whom had never before worked in an adequately funded laboratory where needs were anticipated rather than placed in a queue.

The academic expansion of the Research School may be judged by considering some of the first professorial appointments. In 1950, the Commonwealth Astronomer, R. van der Reit (Dick) Woolley, became an honorary Professor of Astronomy at the ANU. Oliphant further expanded the academic range of the School in 1952 by appointing John C. Jaeger as Professor of Geophysics. In 1956, Oliphant appointed Kenneth Le Couteur, an outstanding theorist who had been responsible for the extraction of the beam from the Liverpool cyclotron, as Professor of Theoretical Physics. Also in 1956, when Woolley was appointed Astronomer Royal and the transfer of the Commonwealth Observatory on Mt Stromlo to the University formed the ANU Department of Astronomy, Bart J. Bok from Harvard was appointed as Professor of Astronomy. In 1962, Bernhard H. Neumann was appointed as Professor of Mathematics.

Oliphant made a senior academic appointment in a field close to his own in 1950 when Ernest W. Titterton, then at Harwell, was appointed as a Professor of Physics. Titterton had been Oliphant's first research student in Birmingham and from 1943 to 1947 was a member of the British group at Los Alamos. He was experienced in the use of cloud chambers and emulsions, both of which would be useful techniques for studying the properties of some of the 'strange particles' that might be produced by a high-energy accelerator. The original strategy was for Titterton's group of nuclear physicists to conduct an experimental nuclear research programme using a number of small accelerators, while Oliphant's team of accelerator builders completed the big machine. The small accelerators included a 1.2 MeV Cockcroft-Walton set (purchased in 1951, commissioned in 1952), a 33 MeV electron synchrotron (a gift from Harwell in 1955) and an 8 MeV cyclotron (built in Canberra in 1955 as the injector for the big machine). The original strategy was soon out of date, due to delays in machine building and because the nuclear physics research programme was proceeding independently.

The accelerator

Oliphant's initial plans for the new Research School were centred on the construction of an accelerator that could operate at 2 GeV, that is, at twice the energy of the Birmingham proton synchrotron. Oliphant called the proposed accelerator a cyclo-synchrotron and described it in Nature in 1950. Although construction of the massive foundations and assembly of the 1400-ton magnet proceeded at a satisfactory rate, it became clear by 1953 that the US proton synchrotrons would outperform the Canberra cyclo- synchrotron before the latter could be completed.

Oliphant was forced to revise his plans and to increase the target energy to 10 GeV or more in order to remain competitive. His proposal was to convert the pole pieces and the main magnet of the cyclo- synchrotron into a homopolar generator (HPG), which stored energy in massive steel discs rotating at 900 rpm. Molten sodium jets would provide interconnections between the rotors using technology to be developed by E.K. (Ken) Inall. The stored energy would be drawn as an electric current that would rise to about 1.6 MA (million amperes) in about 0.6 s and power an air-cored synchrotron magnet located in a separate building (the 'round house'). The designed particle energy was 10 GeV, with an interval between pulses of 10 minutes compared with the 2 GeV pulses at 10-second intervals of the cyclo-synchrotron.

These changes were an ingenious solution to the problem of designing a particle accelerator that would be competitive because of its higher energy, but the competitiveness was achieved at the expense of a much slower pulse rate, which might make the machine very difficult to use for high-energy experiments. The machine, although less complicated than the original design because of the separation of functions, made great demands on the design and construction staff, some of whom found the task before them daunting.

Oliphant was more than ever in need of people who had 'fire in their bellies'. Trained in basic physics, Oliphant was a talented mechanical designer justifiably confident in his own natural ability. He was a successful but demanding group leader, who inspired great loyalty in the staff who worked closely with him. He was generous and tolerant towards his staff to an extraordinary degree, but his tolerance had its limits and he had a wicked turn of phrase. He often expressed disappointment at the time taken to complete the work, 'You have held this up by 18 months', but never complained that someone was not working hard enough. Oliphant sometimes said that a design had been made too complicated, or too sophisticated – 'We'll have no Rolls Royce installations in this building' – or even (horrors!) that a component was 'unnecessarily well made'.

The Canberra accelerator programme was seriously behind schedule by 1955. Members of the accelerator team remained fiercely loyal to Oliphant and looked to him for leadership as it became more widely known throughout the School that delays in the accelerator project could cause serious problems for ANU. There were complaints from some members of the University of Sydney's School of Physics about the magnitude of the research funds going to ANU. In 1955/56, several joint meetings were held between Sydney and ANU physics groups to discuss the ANU accelerator programme. At one point a group of three senior members of the ANU accelerator team sought to discuss external criticisms with Oliphant. The critics argued that, in view of accelerator developments in other countries, work on the Canberra 10 GeV accelerator should be abandoned. Oliphant admitted that the accelerator was behind schedule and that some mistakes may have been made, but argued that the construction was the team's own original work and much could be learned from it. After the last joint meeting, Oliphant summarised the arguments as follows:

Berkeley had found the antiproton and would skim off the cream of the experimental results; the 10 GeV Russian machine would be in operation before the ANU machine was ready; and ANU should cut its losses and complete the HPG for other work.

In conclusion, Oliphant made the surprise announcement that the construction of the accelerator would be deferred and all efforts would be concentrated on completion of the HPG.

Completion of the homopolar generator

The combination of a large HPG for energy storage and a separate air-cored magnet for particle acceleration was an imaginative proposal that required detailed design work. With the resources available, Oliphant's decision to defer the accelerator and concentrate construction efforts on the completion of a working HPG now seems inevitable. It certainly should not have come as a surprise in 1955. This limited objective took until 1965 to complete and involved an immense amount of work. The modifications required for the HPG to meet the requirements of a 10 GeV accelerator had been made using liquid metal jets of sodium-potassium alloy (NaK). In 1962, the HPG with NaK interconnections met all design criteria and, in a series of tests, supplied currents over 2 MA. This was a short-lived triumph for the hard-working HPG team for, unfortunately, during cleaning operations in July 1962, NaK contaminated with kerosene and potassium peroxide exploded, tragically blinding George Lagos, a young technician.

Over the years, the Research School had gained considerable experience in the use of the conducting liquid metals, mercury (Hg, liquid at room temperature), sodium-potassium alloy (NaK, liquid at room temperature) and sodium (Na, liquid above about 100°C). Following the inquiry that was convened after the July 1962 accident, the use of NaK and other liquid metal systems was abandoned and the HPG was rebuilt under Jack Blamey's supervision using copper/graphite brushes designed by Dr R.A. (Dick) Marshall.

With its solid brushgear, and a new air- bearing system designed by Oliphant, the 1965 HPG was, in all respects, a better, safer and more versatile machine than the 1962 HPG with NaK interconnections, even though the earlier machine had met all its design criteria. The 1965 HPG worked well, but no attempt was made to use it to operate a large accelerator. Instead, it was used extensively as a power source for some high-current facilities in laser and plasma physics, including a 30 Tesla-pulsed magnet, a powerful rail gun and the LT-4 Tokamak. The LT-4 Tokamak was designed specifically to operate with power supplied by the HPG, and the combination performed reliably and routinely for several years, exploring the conditions needed for toroidal plasma confinement. After nearly a quarter of a century of valuable service, under a wide range of operating conditions, the HPG was decommissioned at the end of 1985.

Retirement as Director

Oliphant retired from the Directorship of the Research School of Physical Sciences in 1963 and, a year later, from his position as Professor of Particle Physics. His involvement with the HPG also ceased and he was therefore free to pursue other research interests. He received the title of Professor of Ionised Gases, and was provided with a small laboratory, a research assistant and a technician. Thus, he returned to the small-scale physics that had been the subject of his early days as a PhD student in the Cavendish, namely the interaction of intermediate-energy positive ions with metal surfaces. Much had been done in that field in the intervening thirty years but, in his view, much still needed to be done because 'the results are strangely inconsistent and their explanation often dubious and incomplete'. These words set the stage for the work described in four papers presenting the results from his laboratory in the period 1965-1968.

Taking advantage of modern, clean high- vacuum technology, he and his small group investigated reactions between numerous light atomic and molecular ions, some multiply charged, and a number of carefully degassed metal surfaces. How long he would have continued this work one can only guess. He clearly delighted in getting his hands dirty again in the laboratory, designing and making some of his own apparatus. In 1968, the University fellowship that had been provided for him had run its course and it was finally time for him to begin to retire from the university he had been so instrumental in founding.

Oliphant never completely severed his connection with ANU. He shared an office in the School, participated in School seminars and discussions and regularly attended Founders Day, which was established in 1981 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Founders Day is held every October on a date near his birthday and consists of a morning of seminars and award presentations, followed by a barbecue lunch for the whole School. Oliphant remained a very strong defender of the special nature of the ANU. As an example, in 1991, at the age of 90, he made a fighting speech at a meeting attended by over 500 members of the ANU staff, criticising Government proposals to separate the John Curtin School of Medical Research from the ANU.

The Australian Academy of Science

Attempts to form a 'national academy of science' to promote scientific research in Australia and to represent Australia in international scientific activities started as long ago as 1901. These early attempts had failed because of regional loyalties and jealousies and the difficulties of interstate travel before the provision of regular commercial air transport.

In the early 1950s, Oliphant and Dr David F. Martyn, Chief Scientist with the Radio Research Board, independently decided that a new attempt should be made to form an Australian Academy of Science, and that those Fellows of the Royal Society of London now resident in Australia could be used as a nucleus and planning group. The Prime Minister of the time, Robert Menzies, agreed wholeheartedly with the need for an Academy of the kind proposed, and the powerful collaboration between Oliphant and Martyn overcame the difficulties that had defeated previous attempts to form an Academy. Oliphant and Martyn organised the Petition to the Queen requesting the formation of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), which was constituted by Royal Charter in 1954. Professor Mark Oliphant was its first President.

The formation of the AAS encouraged the development of Australian science nationally and its representation internationally, but the arguments that had delayed the foundation of the AAS for so long would not instantly disappear. Although the need for an Australian academy of science was widely recognised, it needed all Oliphant's persuasive and placatory powers to hold the AAS together during those early years. Other talented personalities, such as David Martyn, H.R. (Hedley) Marston, and A.C.D. (David) Rivett, all fellow Council members who had been prime movers with Oliphant in the formation of the AAS, had strong but differing views on its planning and organisation.

There were also problems arising from the relationships between the AAS, CSIRO, the State universities and ANU, and their differing responsibilities for research.

The AAS needed a building. Oliphant approached Essington Lewis and W.S. Robinson, leading industrialists who had been elected to the AAS in 1954. They spearheaded appeals to the major commercial and industrial companies for funding, with immediate success. Eventually, the total cost of the building was covered by donations. As Chairman of the Building Design Committee, Oliphant oversaw the construction of the Dome, as it was called, in early 1959. The completion of this distinctive and prize-winning building in record time was a remarkable achievement.

In 1961, Oliphant delivered the Academy's Matthew Flinders Lecture, entitled 'Faraday in his time and today'.

Along with astronomers worldwide, Oliphant recognised the need for large telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, where the southern skies were under- explored, and gave strong support for the creation of one in Australia, to be operated jointly by Britain and Australia. In 1963, he initiated the action of the AAS in the preliminary stages of the establishment of the Anglo-Australian Telescope, which was finally inaugurated at Siding Spring, NSW, in October 1974.

In September 1964, Oliphant accompanied the President of the AAS, T.M. Cherry, and two other Fellows, E.S. Hills and E.J. Underwood, on a four- week visit to China, at the invitation of the Academia Sinica. The invitation was reciprocated in the following year.

A dinner was held in the Dome in 1987, co-hosted by the AAS and the Royal Society of London, to celebrate Oliphant's election to the Royal Society fifty years earlier. This occasion, together with a bust of Sir Mark that has been installed in the lobby of the Dome, are testimony to the esteem in which he is held by the AAS.

Governor of South Australia, 1971-1976

In 1971, Sir Mark Oliphant began a new career when he accepted an invitation by the Premier of South Australia, D.A. (Don) Dunstan, to be nominated as Governor of that State. Dunstan had sought such an appointment three years earlier, but political events had intervened.

Oliphant's appointment broke the long tradition of appointing retired military officers to the post. Oliphant believed that the role of Governor, although mainly ceremonial, would give him the chance to serve his home State and he accepted the appointment proudly and willingly. He warned the Premier, though, that he was not prepared to be a 'military-type' Governor and that he would wish to be able to speak as freely on public matters as he had been in Canberra. Dunstan was more than agreeable. Despite his age (almost 70), Oliphant was fit for the post and relished the challenges that it would bring.

Oliphant was to serve five years as Governor. The public and the media welcomed him, and were proud to have such a distinguished scientist and acknowledged humanitarian as their Governor. Some politicians and commentators claimed to see in Oliphant leftist political leanings; others thought his background less suitable than a military one as a preparation for the post and that his ebullience was likely to cause difficulties for the government.

Oliphant was a decidedly different sort of Governor from his predecessors. Well informed on a wide range of issues, and accustomed to speaking his mind, he was not reticent in expressing opinions on matters of public concern. He wrote his own speeches and was an excellent performer, and his remarks made good press copy. His views continued to receive public attention, including those on the nature of God and the perils of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. On local matters, he spoke very strongly in favour of environmental issues, especially in defence of the Adelaide Hills, and he expressed his opposition to libertarian society, unrestricted pornography, child abuse, drinking drivers, 'magistrates' whims', ugly architecture and vandalism, to mention a few. Polls suggested that the populace approved of a Governor willing to speak his mind, especially as his commonly expressed opinions were widely shared by the general public.

There was little doubt about his popularity, and of the popularity of the office while he held it. He travelled widely across the State, discharging all his duties with dedication and enthusiasm. He tried to draw into the vice-regal circuit people normally outside it. With Rosa, he once hosted a garden party for 4,000 people who had never previously attended a vice-regal function.

Later on, Oliphant's relationship with Dunstan deteriorated markedly. Oliphant came to feel the irrelevance of the Governor in the political process, and to believe that the government only tolerated the existence of the post because it could not do away with it. Ministers began to appear offhand in their dealings with him, for example, failing to dress with appropriate formality for their presentation to him of an Address-in-Reply. This and an accumulating series of aggravations, including a hurtful confrontation with radical students at Flinders University, led him to seek to resign in August 1974, only to be prevented from doing so by the intervention of the Premier.

The tensions did not subside and were heightened when Oliphant proposed to make a public statement supporting the action taken by Governor-General Sir John Kerr in dismissing the Whitlam Government in November 1975. The South Australian Government's response was to pass legislation setting tight guidelines for the dismissal of the government by the Governor, so avoiding any possibility of a similar crisis in South Australia.

Among Oliphant's last acts in office was to write to the Premier, expressing his concerns at the government's intention to appoint Aboriginal pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls as his successor on the grounds that various cultural issues would have affected Nicholls' capacity to fill the role. Dunstan nevertheless appointed the pastor. Oliphant's response was, typically, to invite the Governor-designate and his wife to visit Government House to familiarise themselves with its operations.

Oliphant returned to Canberra in December 1976 but his involvement with South Australian politics was not yet at an end. In 1978, he became deeply embroiled in the 'Salisbury Affair', in which Dunstan dismissed South Australia's Police Commissioner, H.H. (Harold) Salisbury, on the grounds of allegedly misleading Parliament about the nature of material kept in secret files. Oliphant sided with Salisbury, whom he regarded as a man of integrity, and asserted on several occasions that, had he still been in office, he would have offered his own resignation rather than sign an Executive Order dismissing Salisbury. The rift with Dunstan was never permanently healed.

With funding by public subscription, a bronze head of Sir Mark was later erected outside Government House on North Terrace, Adelaide's principal thoroughfare.

Oliphant – some impressions

Oliphant had style and dignity. White-haired from an early age, he retained his distinctive, upright stature to the end of his long life. These features, together with his booming laugh, gave him a 'presence' in any gathering. His personality was such that even his opponents had to like him. He was richly endowed with natural talents. His leadership qualities, ingenuity, originality, idealism, courage and zeal, to mention but a few, served him well.

Oliphant had interests in nuclear physics, accelerator physics and other, broad areas of engineering physics. Although he made no pretence to be a theoretician, he was supremely confident in his own ability to master any technology even before some of what he liked to call 'the details' had been properly worked out. He always chose ambitious projects, and not infrequently underestimated the time needed to complete them. He liked to work with only a small team, which enabled him to be flexible about altering his plans. He never adopted the detailed planning methods for accelerator design involving large teams of engineers that were used with such success in the USA and at CERN. His own self-confidence could be infectious but it limited the effective criticism that a more determined and independent professional staff might have been able to provide. As one of them noted: 'None of us had ever defied Oliphant. Our sin was that we had failed to agree with him'. He was a natural risk-taker who never hesitated to rail at what he believed was excessive caution, continually exhorting his team to 'stick their necks out'.

Always 'good with his hands', Oliphant's exceptional technical skills were recognised while he was still at school, and were appreciated by Kerr Grant in Adelaide and Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory. Oliphant liked to be involved in all aspects of a major project. He enjoyed detailed design work and, throughout his professional life, continued to take personal responsibility for the design and construction of important components of major projects. One of Oliphant's continuing pleasures was jewellery-making, especially with silver, an interest perhaps aroused by his job with an Adelaide jeweller for a short time after leaving school. He made Rosa's wedding ring out of a nugget that his father had brought back from the Coolgardie goldfields. While Governor of South Australia, he installed a small workshop in the grounds of Government House and, at the end of his tenure, presented the household with a set of six silver candlesticks that he had made himself on the premises.

Oliphant was a skilful and persuasive speaker and writer who could 'think on his feet'. He was quick-witted, enjoyed argument and debate, and never missed a chance to take a rise out of the bureaucracy when it seemed to him foolish or pompous. But he was notorious for his sometime public changes of opinion. For example, he adopted a fiercely anti-nuclear stance after Hiroshima, like many scientists who had worked on the atomic bomb, and his views on euthanasia changed as he approached his own death.

Along with these skills in the spoken and written word went salesmanship, which enabled him to sell ideas and elicit funds and materials for their realisation, the principal examples being: the building of the cyclotron and proton synchrotron in Birmingham (from Lord Nuffield and Tube Alloys) before and after the war, respectively; silver for electromagnetic separation (US Treasury); the accelerator in Canberra (Australian Government); and the 'Dome' of the Academy of Science (Australian commerce and industry).

Oliphant was forthright and passionate in his belief in the benefits that the world, especially Australia, could gain from application of the physical sciences. He was on firm ground when explaining basic physics and its potential benefits to the Australian public, but the simple analysis that worked so well in physics did little to explain more complicated social issues. For Oliphant, science always provided the right guide, whereas practitioners of other disciplines such as economists, architects, clergymen, non-scientific administrators, engineers and, of course, politicians, had, he believed, little to offer. Some of these, for their part, considered him to be naïve and simplistic.

Oliphant's impatience with security rules during the war was shown, for example, when, on a visit to Washington in 1941, he informed R.G. Casey, Australia's representative there, about Britain's work on uranium. This indiscretion, and others, may have been responsible for his exclusion from later high-level decision-making on nuclear matters. He was outspoken in his postwar opposition to the military use of nuclear power and made no effort to conceal his views, which may have caused him to be denied a visa to enter the United States in 1951, and resulted in unfair political smears in his own country.

Two world wars affected the course of his life. All of his secondary schooling was spent during the first, when teaching staff was severely depleted as the young flocked to the Front. During the second, his part in the development of radar and the atomic bomb gave him international recognition and prestige, but at the cost of severe set- back to the development of the cyclotron in Birmingham, upon which all work ceased as he and members of his laboratory moved over to war work. Resumption of peace- time pursuits was slow, amid severe postwar stringencies in Britain. For many years after the war, a large portion of his time was focused on anti-war activities. In Canberra, the paucity of infrastructure in postwar Australia, necessitating the importation of technical staff, equipment and resources from Britain, was undoubtedly a contributory factor in his failure to achieve his goal of building the accelerator.

Anyone attempting, however briefly, to appraise Oliphant's achievements cannot fail to be impressed by their range and significance. Oliphant was justifiably proud of the fundamental work he had done with Rutherford in Cambridge in the 1930s. This research on nuclear reactions in the light nuclei assured Oliphant of a permanent place among the pioneering founders of nuclear physics. During the war, he and his teams from Birmingham University made significant contributions to the development of radar and the atomic bomb. After the war, he was the first to request and receive funds to construct a proton synchrotron. His major achievements in Australia were his contribution to the creation of the ANU; the formation, as founding Director, of the ANU Research School of Physical Sciences, with its outstanding research facilities; and his leading role in the establishment of the Australian Academy of Science. No other physicist has made a greater impact on Australian science than Professor Sir Mark Oliphant.

Family

Sir Mark enjoyed a happy, loving family life, which was, however, touched by sadness. He and his gentle wife Rosa suffered the sudden, tragic loss of their infant son, Geoffrey, in Cambridge in 1933 and that of their adult son, Michael, in Melbourne in 1971. The family endured prolonged periods of separation, especially during the war. Rosa died in 1987, after a long illness during which Sir Mark cared for her devotedly. He and Rosa always had the loving support of their children Michael and Vivian, daughter-in-law Monica and grandchildren Michael, Katherine and Michele.

Honours and awards

• 1927: 1851 Exhibition Scholarship.
• 1931: Messel Research Fellow, Royal Society.
• 1934: Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge.
• 1937: Fellow of the Royal Society.
• 1942: Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, University of Melbourne.
• 1943: Hughes Medal, Royal Society.
• 1946: Silvanus Thomson Medal, Institute of Radiology, England.
• 1946: Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, St Andrews University.
• 1946: Honorary Fellow, New York Academy of Sciences.
• 1947: Trasenoter Medal, Association des Ingénieurs, Liège.
• 1947: Kelvin Lecture, Institution of Electrical Engineers.
• 1948: Faraday Medal, Institution of Engineers.
• 1949: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, University of Toronto.
• 1949: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, University of Belfast.
• 1950: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, University of Birmingham.
• 1952: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, University of Technology, NSW.
• 1952: Honorary Fellow, St John's College, Cambridge.
• 1954: Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
• 1954-1957: Foundation President, Australian Academy of Science
• 1955: Bakerian Lecture, Royal Society.
• 1955: Rutherford Memorial Lecture, Royal Society.
• 1956: Galathea Medal, His Majesty The King of Denmark.
• 1958: Medal of the Australian Institution of Production Engineers.
• 1959: Knight of the British Empire.
• 1961: Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture, Australian Academy of Science.
• 1967: Professor Emeritus, Australian National University.
• 1968: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, Australian National University.
• 1969: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, University of Adelaide.
• 1971: Knight of Grace of the Order of St John.
• 1974: James Cook Medal, The Royal Society of New South Wales.
• 1975: Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences.
• 1977: Companion of the Order of Australia.
• 1977: Oscar Mendelsohn Lecture, Monash University, Victoria.
• 1979: Medal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
• 1980: Duhig Memorial Lecture, Brisbane.

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.14, no.3, 2003. It was written by:

• J.H. Carver, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra
• R.W. Crompton, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra
• D.G. Ellyard, Beecroft, New South Wales
• E.K. Inall, Wahroonga, New South Wales

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dr Mary Carver for researching background material and preparation of the manuscript. The formidable task of locating and correctly compiling a list of Sir Mark's publications was assisted by staff of several institutions, especially by Ms Susan Woodburn, Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide.

References

• S. Cockburn and D. Ellyard, Oliphant. The Life and Times of Sir Mark Oliphant, (Axiom Books, Adelaide, 1981).
• F. Fenner (ed.), The First Forty Years, (Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, 1995).
• S.G. Foster and M.M. Varghese, The Making of the Australian National University 1946-1996, (Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1996).
• L.U. Hibbard, Oliphant – Engineer. An Account by One of his 'Boys' of Professor Marcus Oliphant, and his Machines in Birmingham and Canberra, unpublished, 2003 (to be deposited in the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide, South Australia). Supported by original documentary material.
• E.K. Inall, Mark Oliphant, a Great Australian Physicist and Philosopher, unpublished, 2003 (to be deposited in the Adolph Basser Library of the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra).
• T.R. Ophel and J.G. Jenkin, Fire in the Belly. The First Fifty Years of the Pioneer School at the ANU, (Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, ANU, Canberra, 1996).

Bibliography

• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The spreading of aqueous solutions on the surface of mercury', Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 18 (1926), pp. 126-127, abstract.
• R.S. Burdon and M.L. Oliphant, 'The problem of the surface tension of mercury and the action of aqueous solutions on a mercury surface', Transactions of the Faraday Society, London, 23 (1927), pp. 205-213.
• M.L. Oliphant and R.S. Burdon, 'Adsorption of gases on the surface of mercury', Nature, 120 (1927), pp. 584-585.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Selective adsorption from gaseous mixtures by a mercury surface formed in the mixture', Philosophical Magazine S7, 6 (1928), pp. 422-433.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The effects produced by positive ion bombardment of solids: metallic ions', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 24(3) (1928), pp. 451-469.
• P.B. Moon and M.L. Oliphant, 'Current distribution near edges of discharge-tube cathodes', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 25(4) (1929), pp. 461-468.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The action of metastable atoms of helium on a metal surface', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 124 (1929), pp. 228-242.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The liberation of electrons from metal surfaces by positive ions I. Experimental', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 127 (1930), pp. 373-387.
• M.L.E. Oliphant and P.B. Moon, 'The liberation of electrons from metal surfaces by positive ions II. Theoretical', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 127 (1930), pp. 388-406.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'Electron emission from Langmuir probes and from the cathode of the glow discharge through gases', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 132 (1931), pp. 631-645.
• R.M. Chaudrhi (sic) and M.L. Oliphant, 'The energy distribution among the positive ions at the cathode of the glow discharge through gases', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 137 (1932), pp. 662-676.
• P.B. Moon and M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The surface ionisation of potassium by tungsten', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 137 (1932), pp. 463-480.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Heavy hydrogen in contact with normal water', Nature, 132 (1933), p. 675.
• M.L.E. Oliphant and Lord Rutherford, 'Experiments on the transmutation of elements by protons', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 141 (1933), pp. 259-281.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, B.B. Kinsey and Lord Rutherford, 'The transmutation of lithium by protons and by ions of the heavy isotope of hydrogen', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 141 (1933), pp. 722-733.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, P. Harteck and Lord Rutherford, 'Transmutation effects observed with heavy hydrogen', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 144 (1934), pp. 692-703.
• M.L. Oliphant, P. Harteck and Lord Rutherford, 'Transmutation effects observed with heavy hydrogen', Nature, 133 (1934), p. 413.
• M.L. Oliphant, E.S. Shire and B.M. Crowther, 'Disintegration of the separated isotopes of lithium by protons and by heavy hydrogen', Nature, 133 (1934), p. 377.
• M.L. Oliphant, E.S. Shire and B.M. Crowther, 'Separation of the isotopes of lithium and some nuclear transformations observed with them', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 146 (1934), pp. 922-929.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'Transformation effects produced in lithium, heavy hydrogen and beryllium, by bombardment with hydrogen ions', in Papers and Discussions of the International Conference on Physics, London, 1934, 1 (Nuclear Physics) (The Physical Society, London, 1935), pp. 144-161.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, A.E. Kempton and Lord Rutherford, 'The accurate determination of the energy released in certain nuclear transformations', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 149 (1935), pp. 406-416.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, A.E. Kempton and Lord Rutherford, 'Some nuclear transformations of beryllium and boron, and the masses of the light elements', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 150 (1935), pp. 241-258.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Masses of light atoms', Nature, 137 (1936), pp. 396-397, p. 407.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The conservation of mass-energy and momentum in the transformation of the light elements', in Kernphysik: Vorträge gehalten am Physicalischen Institut der Eidgennossischen Technische Hochschule, Zurich, im Sommer 1936 (30 Juni-4 Juli), (Springer, Berlin, 1936), pp. 62-70.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The new high voltage laboratory at Cambridge', Nuovo Cimento, 15(3) (1938), pp. 160-166.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Radioactivity and sub-atomic phenomena: introduction and summary', Annual Reports on the Progress of Chemistry, 35 (The Chemical Society, London, 1939), pp. 7-16.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The utilization of nuclear energy', Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 33 (1945), pp. 506-514. On two other occasions Oliphant delivered lectures to The Royal Institution in its Friday Evening Discourses: on 21 February 1947, a lecture entitled 'Problems and techniques of modern nuclear physics' and, on 5 May 1950, one entitled 'The generation and use of atomic particles'.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Nuclear energy in war and peace', Victory for Peace, 6(1) (1946), pp. 5-7.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The release of atomic energy', Nature, 157 (1946), pp. 5-7.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Nuclear physics and the future. The 37th Kelvin Lecture', Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 94(1) (1947), pp. 304-308.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Rutherford and the modern world. The third Rutherford Memorial Lecture for the Physical Society', Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 59 (1947), pp. 144-155.
• M.L. Oliphant, J.S. Gooden and G.S. Hide, 'The acceleration of charged particles to very high energies', Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 59 (1947), pp. 666-677.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'The scientific and technical backgrounds II. The practical realization of the release of atomic energy and atomic weapons', in Atomic Energy, its International Implications, a discussion by a Chatham House Study Group, (Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1948), pp. 36-41.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'University or Institute of Technology?', Universities Quarterly, 4(1) (1949), pp. 19-23.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The cyclosynchrotron: acceleration of heavy particles to energies above 1,000 MeV, and the homopolor generator as a source of very large current pulses', Nature 165 (1950), pp. 466-468.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Administration of scientific research'. Targets for Management.Proceedings of the 10th Australian One-Day Top Management Conference of the Australian Institute of Management, Melbourne Division, Melbourne, Australia, (8 March 1951), pp. 38-44.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Radiation hazards of atomic energy. The Röntgen Oration', Medical Journal of Australia, (1952, vol. 1), pp. 277-281.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The industrial applications of atomic energy', in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year 1951, (US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1952), pp. 223-234.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The Research School of Physical Sciences in the Australian National University. Presidential address to Section A of ANZAAS', in Report of the 29th Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, (Sydney, August 1952), pp. 31-46.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The University of Birmingham cyclotron', Nature, 169 (1952), pp. 476-477.
• M. Oliphant, 'Peace or destruction?', Voice: the Australian Independent Monthly, 3(7) (1954), pp. 12-13.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Is there a retreat from Christianity?', Anglican Review, 28 (1954), pp. 9-14.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The physics of atomic energy', Atomic Power in Australia. Proceedings of Symposium held at the New South Wales University of Technology, (31st August- 1st September 1954), pp. 11-22.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'Science and mankind', Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 82(4) (1955), pp. 837-850.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The acceleration of protons to energies above 10 GeV. Bakerian Lecture to the Royal Society, 1955', Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 234 (1956), pp. 441-456.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Man and knowledge', Meanjin, 15(4) (1956), pp. 325-332.
• M. Oliphant, 'The University and the community', excerpts from an address delivered in Hobart during 'University Week', 1956, Westerly, 1 (1957), pp. 7-10.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'Can we harness the power in hydrogen?', Atomic Energy, 1 (1957), 6-8.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Science and the future of humanity', Overland, 13 (1958), pp. 21-27.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Science and the survival of civilization. Presidential Address', in Report of the 33rd Congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, (Adelaide, August 1958), pp. 8-16.
• Sir Marcus L. Oliphant, 'Fission or fusion...two roads to atomic power', Journal of Industry, 27(1) (1959), pp. 61-67, 27(2), pp. 61-65.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The possibilities of thermonuclear power and its significance for Australia', Journal of the Institution of Production Engineers, 38(4) (1959), pp. 165-170, p. 180.
• Sir Mark Oliphant, 'The dichotomy in our culture and its effect upon education. 7th Frank Tate Memorial Lecture, 17 June 1960', Australian Journal of Education, 4(3) (1960), pp. 155-164.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The physical sciences in Australian universities', Vestes: the Australian Universities' Review, 3(2) (1960), pp. 11-15.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Faraday in his time and today. Matthew Flinders Lecture to the Australian Academy of Science', Australian Academy of Science Year Book 1961, (1961), pp. 69-87.
• J.W. Blamey, P.O. Carden, L.U. Hibbard, E.K. Inall, R.A. Marshall and Sir Mark Oliphant, 'The large homopolar generator at Canberra: initial tests', Nature, 195 (1962), pp. 113-114.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Science and a First Cause', Australian Quarterly, (December 1964), pp. 27-35.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Man is an earth-bound creature', lunch-hour lecture, St Mark's Library, Canberra, (5 November 1964), 8 roneoed pages.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Over pots of tea: excerpts from a diary of a visit to China', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (May 1966), pp. 36-43.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The two Ernests – I', Physics Today, 19(9) (1966), pp. 35-49.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The two Ernests – II', Physics Today, 19(10) (1966), pp. 41-51.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The University of Queensland Act', Vestes: the Australian Universities' Review, 9(2) (1966), pp. 74-77.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, 'John Douglas Cockcroft 1897-1967', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 14 (1968), pp. 139-188.
• Professor Sir Mark Oliphant, 'Some personal recollections of a science in the making', Vacuum: the International Journal and Abstracting Service for Vacuum Science and Technology, 18(12) (1968), pp. 621-624.
• E.R. Cawthron, D.L. Cotterell and Sir Mark Oliphant, 'The interaction of atomic particles with solid surfaces at intermediate energies I. Secondary electron emission', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 314 (1969), pp. 39-51.
• E.R. Cawthron, D.L. Cotterell and Sir Mark Oliphant, 'The interaction of atomic particles with solid surfaces at intermediate energies II. Scattering processes', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 314 (1969), pp. 53-72.
• E.R. Cawthron, D.L. Cotterell and Sir Mark Oliphant, 'The interaction of atomic particles with solid surfaces at intermediate energies III. Angular and energy distribution of particles scattered with electric charge from polycrystalline and crystalline platinum', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A, 319 (1970), pp. 435-459.
• M.L.E. Oliphant, Science and Mankind, The Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial Lectures 1969, (Ghana Publishing Corporation for the University of Ghana, Accra, 1970), 77 pp.
• Sir Mark Oliphant, 'Science and humanity. Presidential address to Junior ANZAAS', Australian Journal of Science, 32(10) (1970), pp. 377-382.
• Mark Oliphant, Rutherford – Recollections of the Cambridge Days, (Elsevier, London, 1972).
• J.H. Piddington and M.L. Oliphant, 'David Forbes Martyn', Records of the Australian Academy of Science, 2(2) (1972), pp. 47-60.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'The second century', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 100 (1976), pp. 1-2.
• Sir Mark Oliphant, 'Looking back', in Ageing and Looking Back, eds F.M. Burnet and M. Oliphant (Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney, 1979), pp. 29-58.
• Sir Mark Oliphant, 'A physicist looks at today and tomorrow', in Challenge to Australia, eds Sir Barton Pope, Sir MacFarlane Burnet and Sir Mark Oliphant (Southdown Press, Melbourne, 1982), pp. 35-44.
• M.L. Oliphant, 'Chadwick and the neutron – a personal recollection', Australian Physicist, 19 (1982), pp. 50-55.

A collection of Sir Mark's publications is held in the Special Collection of the Barr Smith Library of the University of Adelaide, South Australia.

Written by Graham A. Rigby.

Introduction

Emeritus Professor Lou Davies was an exceptionally tall man who literally stood out in any group of people. This physical characteristic symbolized qualities that made him stand out in many other ways and left a lasting memory among the huge range of people who knew him. Though his professional eminence led to his being widely admired, his personal qualities meant that he is remembered not just with respect but also with affection. These qualities included an unfailing courtesy and friendliness. Even people who did not know him well, and who might have been daunted by his reputation, found him easy to talk to. He showed interest in everyone he met and in virtually any topic of conversation. Those who knew him better will also remember his prodigious note-taking. Whether in a meeting or a private conversation, he had his pen and pad in his hand. This created the impression, at least, that what he was hearing was important enough to record. Whether this was always the case is open to question!

Lou was a scientist, researcher and inventor who was equally at home in the laboratory, the lecture theatre, the board room, the corridors of power and the farm. His career produced bridges between industry and academia. He had a lasting influence on Australian technology and on the careers of other scientists and engineers. His death in Sydney on 28 September 2001, through preceded by a period of serious illness, saw the passing of a man of great fitness and energy. Even in his seventies, he set a pace that would have done credit to a much younger man.

The early years

Lou was born in Sydney on 27 August 1923, the son of Louis Walter and Madge Davies of Lindfield, New South Wales. The family soon moved to Aberdeen in the Hunter Valley and Lou's primary education was at the three-teacher local school in Aberdeen. There he was said to be already showing a talent for mathematics and science. His secondary education started at Muswellbrook Rural School, then at Maitland High School. But the final four years were at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore), where his mathematical talents flourished under the teaching of the School's renowned Headmaster, L.C. Robson. Lou later served as a member of the School Council for 23 years and as its Chairman for four years.

Student, bomber navigator, husband and father

Lou entered the University of Sydney in 1941 as a Science and Engineering student, but his student life was soon re-directed to the war effort. He joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942, trained at Cootamundra, Evans Head, Bairnsdale, Sale and Parkes, and joined 1 Squadron in Darwin as a navigator. He flew fifty-two operational sorties in Beauforts, plus a number of operations in Dakotas to the north of Australia.

Lou had known June Fleming of 'Kelvinside', near Aberdeen, since the age of 12. Though their paths did not cross often during school days and the war, they married on 27 September 1945. (June had been an Army driver at Victoria Barracks). The end of the war also brought Lou back to the University of Sydney, from which he graduated with his BSc in 1948. In fact, he had continued his studies during the war through the University's external studies programme and sat the Mathematics II examination in a tent in a coconut plantation on the equator! He remembered receiving a Credit for that subject. Lou was also an athlete of some note. He had rowed at school, but at university he competed in what was then called the hop-step-and-jump (now known as the triple jump), with considerable success. The combination of his excellent academic results, his athletic prowess and his war service led to the award of the Rhodes Scholarship for New South Wales in 1948.

Lou's military service left a legacy that always remained with him. He stood erect and did not stoop. Though, when talking to someone much shorter, he would sometimes incline his head to one side. When he greeted someone, there was a subtle 'coming to attention' and the faint clicking of heels!

The Rhodes Scholarship took Lou and June to Oxford, where he worked at the famous Clarendon Laboratory towards his DPhil degree. His research was in plasma physics, under the supervision of Dr Heinrich Kuhn. A major goal of such research was and is the containment of plasmas for controlled nuclear fusion. As Lou remarked many years later, it still remains an intractable problem, but his own work was scientifically satisfying and led to the award of the DPhil in 1951 [1, 2, 3]. His later career did not continue with plasma research, though his earliest work at CSIRO had a link with his doctoral research. But, as happens with many research students, the physical insights and skills he acquired were applied to new and different problems during his professional career. While at Oxford, he also exercized his skills as a triple-jumper and competed with the University teams in Wales, Dublin, Greece and the USA.

Lou and June's first son was born during their time at Oxford and was named Louis Walter, as were his father and grandfather. The potential for confusion was solved by nicknames. Lou, the father, was known as Bill, particularly in the earlier part of his life. His friends therefore became differentiated in later life. Those who had known him more than fifty years called him Bill. The newer friends called him Lou. Lou, the son, was called Sandy! Their other two children, Fiona and Gordon, were born after Lou and June returned to Australia.

The CSIRO years

In 1951, Lou and June returned to Sydney, where he was appointed a Research Officer at the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics, then on its way to achieving a world reputation for radio-astronomy. His initial work applied his plasma knowledge to studying microwave noise from the sun [6], but the Division Chief, Dr Taffy Bowen, later suggested that Lou shift his attention to the 'newfangled transistor'.

The transistor was invented at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, just at the time Lou started his studies at Oxford. It turned out to be one of the most important engineering inventions of the twentieth century and resulted in the award of the Nobel Prize to William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Bowen sent Lou to Bell Labs for what was planned as a two-week visit in 1953. During his visit he spent time with the inventors of the transistor and started to build up contacts with other laboratories in the US, including at General Electric. The planned two weeks became six. He became fascinated with the refining of germanium, which was then the principal material for making transistors and the material in which the first transistor was made. In 1954, with Dr Brian Cooper, he set up a section in CSIRO that was to pioneer the manufacture of transistors in Australia [5, 7, 8]. In 1956, Lou also spent some months in New Delhi as a UNESCO Technical Expert. There, he worked, together with other overseas scientists, with the Indian National Physical Laboratory, to foster the growth of local expertise in semiconductor technologies [11].

Lou was awarded a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in 1958, which allowed him to return to Bell Labs and work for twelve months on semiconductor physics. The Bell Telephone Laboratories, with a staff of 15,000, represented one of the most powerful forces for innovation in electronics and telecommunications at the time. Lou joined a basic research group at Murray Hill which itself had a research staff of 150. His bibliography shows a large number of publications on zone-refining and semiconductor devices, dating from this time [9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15]. Zone refining became a key process for achieving the required levels of purity in semiconductor materials. The physics of what happens during this process is complex and requires special mathematics (confluent hypergeometric functions) to describe it. On looking back years later, Lou regarded his research into zone refining as one of his most rewarding mathematical and scientific achievements. Among the publications from that era was a book on the transistor [4], co-authored with Brian Cooper and published by CSIRO, which was possibly the first book in the world on this topic.

Bridging industry and academia

Six years after the semiconductor laboratory was established at CSIRO, Lou began an involvement with Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd (AWA), that was to continue for 35 years. This was to be followed, five years later, by a joint appointment with the University of New South Wales and meant that, for the greater part of his professional life, Lou was pursuing two parallel careers.

AWA was the largest Australian-owned electronics company and its Chairman, Sir Lionel Hooke, approached Lou to join the company and lead it into the semiconductor era. He was appointed Chief Physicist in 1960. At that time it was almost unheard of for a scientist to leave the special environment of CSIRO to work in industry. The fact that Lou did says something about his creative nature, which, in turn, enabled him to build some pioneering links between sectors of the economy. AWA already had a Research Laboratory (which Lou was to head some years later) and a strong history of applied research in electronics. Lou's task was to establish a new Physical Laboratory, to focus on semiconductors and other areas in applied physics. The Laboratory that he headed was set up in AWA's Rydalmere plant, which manufactured vacuum tubes for radio use and television picture tubes. In an area adjacent to the Laboratory, the company had also set up a transistor manufacturing operation, which was able to make extensive use of the knowledge Lou had developed over the previous six years.

The Physical Laboratory commenced a productive twelve-year period of research and invention. Lou put together a small group of scientists which, under his leadership, showed great foresight into what would become some mainstream technologies in electronics and telecommunications. Notable amongst these was the Laboratory's work on surface acoustic wave devices [37, 47], electrets [23, 26, 34, 41], photovoltaics [51, 52, 53, 54, 55] and optical fibres. Surface acoustic wave device research was largely carried out by Dr Martin Lawrence. These are now a key component of every television receiver and radar system. Electrets, from which permanently polarized capacitor microphones are made, are now found in every telephone and in many other acoustic systems. The charged insulator layer in an electret is normally made from a polymer such as teflon. As an alternative, Lou's colleagues Dr Peter Chudleigh and Dr Richard Collins experimented with anodic oxides grown on aluminium. Though these did work as electrets, a more effective result came from a novel way of polarising FEP teflon that Chudleigh and Collins developed.

Optical fibres have revolutionized land-based telecommunications and have become the most commercially important of the many ideas on which the laboratory worked. Their earlier experiments used liquid-core fibres. Though this was a creative solution to the transmission losses in fibre materials, practical problems led the group to solid-core fibres, and Dr Don Nicol achieved notable results with fibre fabrication and cladding. Because of commercial sensitivities, the optical fibre work led to patent applications, but not publications.

Photovoltaics have become one of the important technologies in the generation of renewable energy. The laboratory identified their potential at an early stage, but the most important developments occurred after Lou's appointment to the University of New South Wales.

Along with the above innovations, research was carried out into other semiconductor effects and devices, such as magnetic and hot electron phenomena. This work led to publications [10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 32, 36, 38] but was not taken further into product development. In addition, Lou published a number of educational and review papers during that time [28, 29, 42, 43, 44]. Regrettably and for reasons given later, AWA was not able to exploit the full potential of many of the Laboratory's innovations, though it did carry forward its optical fibre expertise by forming a joint venture with Corning (USA), which became Optical Wave Guides (Aust).

The twelve-year life of the Physical Laboratory was also one of intense patenting activity. At the end of this article is a list of 46 patent applications that Lou filed (some with co-inventors), that almost all came from this period. This deserves some special comment. Obviously it reflects the creativity of the small group of researchers operating under his leadership, but it was also driven by the company. AWA had licensing agreements with a number of overseas companies, including RCA, Telefunken and Marconi. Since licensing involves the exchange of or payment for intellectual property, AWA was able to strengthen its negotiating position in accordance with the size of its patent portfolio. The Physical Laboratory thus made a direct contribution to the company's commercial negotiations.

Lou was loyal to and supportive of his group of co-workers and paid close attention to the growth of their careers. Later, Richard Collins became Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Sydney and Chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Don Nicol went on to become Director of R&D at the Overseas Telecommunications Commission and, after this was taken over by Telstra, held senior R&D positions with Telstra.

At the time Lou joined AWA, the first integrated circuit had just been demonstrated and was to appear in a more practical form in 1961. Within four years of that event, the company set up an experimental integrated circuit manufacturing facility next-door to the Physical Laboratory, drawing again on their knowledge. In 1967, the first working integrated circuit was produced and the facility commenced commercial operations. Fifteen years later, as a result of management changes in the early 1980s, Lou was appointed General Manager of AWA Microelectronics.

In 1965, a new opportunity and challenge emerged which, as mentioned, was to expand Lou's influence on research and technology and to launch a dual career. Through an agreement between AWA's Chairman, Sir Lionel Hooke, and Sir Philip Baxter, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales for two days a week and retained the position of Chief Physicist at AWA for three days a week. Though very demanding, the dual appointment placed Lou in a position which was rare in Australian experience and which continued to be supported by both organizations. Baxter's successor, Sir Rupert Myers, paid particular attention to ensuring that the arrangement was effective.

At the University of New South Wales, Lou established the Department of Solid State Electronics within the School of Electrical Engineering, and remained its Head until 1982. He was responsible for pioneering semiconductor research there and, as a result, the University became the strongest centre in the country for work in silicon devices and integrated circuit technology. In parallel with publications from the Physical Laboratory, Lou and his colleagues at the University also produced many research and teaching publications [42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 55, 56, 58, 62]. He encouraged the growth of optical fibre research in the School, arranging for the transfer of AWA's fibre-drawing equipment, and a major research activity grew under the leadership of Professor Pak Chu. In 1968 Lou spent a semester as Visiting Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. This Department was eminent in the field of semiconductor and integrated circuit technology and one of the centres from which the 'Silicon Valley' phenomenon grew.

Lou's loyalty and support for his AWA colleagues was mirrored in his support for his postgraduate students, of whom two, Hiroaki Morisaki and Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, went on to distinguished careers. Sitthichai returned to Thailand where, a few years later, he founded and became President of a new private university, the Mahanakorn University of Technology. Thanks to his association with Lou, Sitthichai built strong links with the University of New South Wales as well as with Imperial College, London and elevated his institution to one that is widely respected.

The strength of the University of New South Wales in semiconductors was recognized by a grant under the new Commonwealth Centres of Excellence programme in 1982. A Joint Research Centre was formed between the University and RMIT. Graham Rigby left his position with AWA Microelectronics to become its Director and took over Lou's position as Head of the Solid State Electronics Department. During the nine years of the Centre's operation, it must be said that the greatest success was achieved by the Photovoltaics Research Group under the leadership of Professor Martin Green. So Lou's original decision to promote photovoltaics and his support for Green's early work resulted in a research group with a major reputation around the world. He also arranged for AWA to donate one of Green's first vacuum systems.

Ten years before the events described above, there was an upheaval at AWA that had both negative and positive effects on what Lou was trying to achieve. In 1972, the newly elected Whitlam Government announced a sudden and drastic reduction in the import tariff regime that provided protection to many Australian manufacturers. AWA was very strongly affected by this decision, though its impact varied across the Company. Activities with a strong service component and those involving large systems engineering were less affected than the pure manufacturing activities. Among the latter, electronic components were particularly vulnerable and the Company began closing down such operations, including transistor manufacturing. (The microelectronics operation was less vulnerable, because its products were custom-designed for specialized markets.) The Physical Laboratory was strongly associated with component manufacturing and it suffered a similar fate.

The upheaval, though, placed Lou in a position of broader responsibilities. In 1972, he was appointed Chief Scientist of AWA. His predecessor, Dr Jim Rudd, had died six months earlier and Lou took up a position, which on the one hand had a long and honourable history, and, on the other, increased even further the demands on his time. He relocated some elements of the former Physical Laboratory from Rydalmere to his new base at the North Ryde plant. This preserved the optical fibre expertise, but many other activities were terminated. Lou's broader responsibilities also stimulated him to apply his physical insights into new areas including reliability physics, hazard analysis and safety engineering [57, 59, 60]. By the 1980s, though, changes in AWA's commercial activities and priorities led to reduced support for the Research Laboratories and Lou's appointment as General Manager of AWA Microelectronics became his last executive position in the company. He was appointed to the Board of AWA Ltd in 1987 and remained a Director until 1995.

Service to Government and the community

Though the above activities would constitute more than a full career, Lou became involved in many others on a part-time or voluntary basis.

He was a Foundation Member of the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC). The formation of this council was notable as an act of recognition by the Australian Government of the importance of having an expert and independent source of policy advice in science and technology matters. But its establishment was marked by a false start or two. The McMahon Government, in April 1972, formed an Advisory Committee on Science and Technology, which met only a few times and was disbanded before the end of that year. Then, at the beginning of 1975, Cabinet took a decision to establish ASTEC, with Sir Louis Matheson as Chairman and with Lou as one of a group of eminent scientists and industrialists as its members. ASTEC started work, but with the change of government later that year, found itself in an uncertain relationship with the new Fraser Government. Early in 1976, the Government re-named the same council as the 'interim council' and asked a small advisory group to recommend what to do. As a result, ASTEC was formally re-established in June 1976, with a stronger mandate and the same membership it had in 1975. Lou served on ASTEC for eight years.

He was a foundation member of the Australian Industrial Research Group. An initiative of that association of research directors led to the formation of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences (now the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering). The eminence of Lou's reputation in science and technology led to his election as a Foundation Fellow of the new Academy in 1975 and, in the following year, as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Lou was, at various times during this period, elected also to the Fellowship of the Institution of Engineers (Australia), the Australian Institute of Physics and the Institution of Radio and Electronic Engineers. In 1978 he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia and in 1981, was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (USA), the largest Institution of its kind in the world. The citation for this last honour made particular reference to his early work on zone-refining – an achievement of which he was always particularly proud.

Lou served the Australian Academy of Science as a member of its Solar Energy Committee and as a member of Council from 1983 to 1986. He was a member of the Council of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, its Vice-President for two years and a member of two specialist committees of which one (the Espie Committee) had an important influence on Australia's subsequent industrial R&D activities. He was a member of the Council of the National Association of Testing Authorities, of the Graduate Careers Council of Australia, of the New South Wales Higher Education Board and the International Science and Technology Policy Advisory Committee of the Commonwealth Department of Science. These activities reflected Lou's commitment to a broader range of issues than solid-state physics. He was passionate about good education, the support for research and development in both the public and the private sector, and the effective transfer of knowledge from one sector to the other [61, 63, 64].

The complexity of Lou's professional life poses the question of whether he also had a private and family life. He certainly did. June expressed amazement herself at how he had time to be a good husband and father as well. The way she said this demonstrated how devoted to each other they were. Their capacious house at Roseville was not only the hub of the family, but also the setting for dinner parties enjoyed by a wide variety of their friends. It is true that when Lou was travelling a lot, June had to be mother and father. But when he returned, they did things together, whether it was time at their beach house or the pursuit of their common love of music and theatre. They supported several theatre groups in Sydney, were regular opera-goers and also supported the resident music ensembles at the University of New South Wales. One of the benefits of growing older, June remarked, was that they could devote more time to these activities.

Lou was also a member and sometime President of The Australian Club. This association led to an activity that was characteristic of Lou's creative mind. In the 1990s he developed a strong interest in the sealing of wine corks – a widely recognized and persistent problem. Lou had some new ideas and was considering applying for patents. While this might seem to have little relationship to his professional activities, he was, in fact, Chairman of the Australian Club's Wine Committee for many years and had first-hand knowledge of the problem. Rather than accepting the problem and continuing to enjoy his position, he decided to do something about it!

In the late 1980s, Lou's management activities expanded in new directions. He was appointed to the Board of Ludowici & Son Ltd, which produces rubber and synthetic products for industrial seals and materials handling and also is involved in paper recycling. He later became Chairman. He joined the boards of Radio 2CH Pty Ltd, Alsafe Safety Industries Pty Ltd (workplace protective clothing) and the Australian Caption Centre (television subtitles for hearing-impaired viewers). His research and other scholarly activities resulted in the publication of three books and more than sixty technical papers, and the filing of approximately fifty patent applications.

During the later part of his career, he and June bought a grazing property near Picton, New South Wales and they moved there from Roseville in 1986. He then applied his scientific mind to farm management, adopting new technologies, but still commuted regularly to Sydney for business activities and visits to the University Library and Patent Department. Among other activities related to his new life, he became actively involved with the Mount Annan Botanic Gardens and with an experiment being carried out by the Environmental Protection Authority to monitor the effects of injecting sewage sludge into grazing pastures. He and June set aside 15 hectares of their property to take part in this assessment.

When remembering this remarkable man, it is clear that what he did reflected much more than his intellect, creativity and energy. He made friends with a wide range of people, who were charmed by his never-failing courtesy and generosity. They knew that his wisdom and judgement were to be trusted. Professor Lou Davies is survived by his mother (age 103), his wife June, their daughter Fiona, two sons Sandy and Gordon, and five grandchildren.

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.14, no.4, 2003. It was written by Emeritus Professor Graham A. Rigby, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for information provided by Professor Richard Collins, Mr Gordon Davies, Mrs June Davies, Professor Sir Rupert Myers and an interview conducted by Professor David Craig on behalf of the Australian Academy of Science.

Bibliography

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4. 'The Transistor' CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory (Sydney), 93 pp., Oct 1953 (with B. F. C. Cooper).
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7. 'Semiconductor physics and the transistor'. Proc. IRE (Aust) 17 pp. 41-52, Feb. 1956.
8. 'Low-high conductivity junctions in semiconductors'. Proc. Phys. Soc. B, 70 pp. 885-889, March 1957.
9. 'The ultimate distribution of impurity in the zone-melting process'. Phil. Mag., 3 pp. 159-162, Feb. 1958.
10. 'The reduction of misalignment voltage in Hall measurements'. J. Sci. Instr., 35 p. 111, March 1958.
11. 'Semiconductor and transistors'. In 'Semiconductors and Microwave Techniques' (Indian NPL and UNESCO S. Asia Co-operation Office) pp. 9-33, Aug. 1958
12. 'Metallic contacts to germanium and silicon'. J. Sci. Instr. 35 p. 423, Nov. 1958.
13. 'Determination of the limiting segregation of gallium in zone-refined germanium'. Trans. Metall. Soc, AIME, 212 pp. 799-801, Dec. 1958.
14. 'The efficiency of some zone-refining processes'. Trans Metall Soc AIME 215 pp. 672-675, Aug. 1959.
15. 'The efficiency of some zone-refining processes'. In H. C. Gates: 'Properties of Elemental and Compound Semiconductors', pp. 11-16, 1960.
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17. 'Recombination radiation from silicon under strong field conditions'. Phys. Rev. 121 pp. 381-387, Jan. 1961 (with A. R. Storm).
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19. 'Semiconductor junctions as positional indicators of radiation'. Proc. IRE (Aust), 22 pp. 151-156 Aug. 1961.
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21. 'Electron-hole scattering at high injection levels in germanium'. Nature 194, pp. 762-763, May 1962.
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23. 'Energy distribution of hot electrons in aluminium'. App. Phys Letters 2 pp. 213-215, June 1963 (with R. E. Collins).
24. 'The use of PIN structures in investigations of transient recombination from high injection levels in semiconductors'. Proc. IEEE 51 pp. 1637-1642, Nov. 1963.
25. 'Heat liberation in alloy-junction silicon diodes'. Nature 200 p. 1196, 21 Dec 1963.
26. 'The transport of hot electrons in Al-Al₂O_3-Al tunnel cathodes'. Solid State Electronics. 7 pp. 445-453, June 1964 (with R. E. Collins).
27. 'Solid-state diffusion effects in zone-refining and the use of a getter'. Solid State Electronics. 7 pp. 501-514, July 1964.
28. 'AWV Education Aids – Semiconductors'. Radiotronics, 30 pp. 42-46, March 1965 (with D. K. Money).
29. 'Semiconductors and Transistors'. Radiotronics, 30 pp. 86-95, May 1965 (with H. R. Wilshire).
30. 'Electron-hole scattering effects in semiconductor plasmas'. Proc. Symp. on Plasma Engineering. pp. 18-19, Sydney 25 Feb 1966.
31. 'Thin film magnetoresistive devices'. Radio Research Board Symp. (The Physics of Thin Films) pp. 116-120, Adelaide 1966. Also in Proc. IREE (Aust), 28 pp. 118-120, April 1967.
32. 'Electron and hole mobilities in silicon at high injection levels'. IREE (Aust) Nat. Radio and Electronics Conv. Abstracts, pp. 36-37, 1967 (with M. S. Wells).
33. 'The physics of thin films'. Proc. IREE (Aust) 28 p. 97, April 1967.
34. 'Anodic oxide electrets'. Electronics Lett. 5 pp. 462-463, 18 Sept. 1969 (with R. E. Collins).
35. 'Integrated Hall current element'. Digest – Intl Conf. on Microelectronics, Circuits and Systems Theory. pp. 32-34, Sydney, Aug. 1970 (with G. P. Barnicoat).
36. 'Magneto transistor incorporated in a bipolar integrated circuit'. Digest – Intl Conf. on Microelectronics, Circuits and Systems Theory. pp. 34-35, Sydney, Aug. 1970 (with M. S. Wells).
37. 'Prospects for surface elastic wave crystal-controlled delay-line oscillators'. Proc. IREE (Aust) 32 pp. 61-62, Feb. 1971 (with M. W. Lawrence).
38. 'Some observations on microplasmas in PIN diodes'. Solid State Electronics 14 pp. 428-430, May 1971 (with V. Svoboda).
39. 'Guest Editorial'. Proc. IREE (Aust) 32 p. 191, June 1971 (with G. A. Rigby).
40. 'Magneto transistor incorporated in a bipolar integrated circuit'. Proc. IREE (Aust) 32 pp. 235-238, June 1971 (with M. S. Wells).
41. 'Electrets for microphone applications'. Tech Papers, IEAust Conf. Materials for the Electrical and Electronics Industries. p. 7, Perth, Aug. 1971 (with P. W. Chudleigh).
42. Chaps. 4, 15, 16, 17 in 'Information, Computers, Machines and Man'. Eds A. E. Karbowiak, R. M. Huey (Wiley & Sons) 1971.
43. 'Some frontiers of research in electronics in Australia'. Aust. Sci. Teachers Jnl 17 pp. 41-45, Dec. 1971.
44. 'Applied Physics – Physics and Engineering'. In 'The Application of Physics in Industry'. Eds J. S. Blakemore, C. J. Milner. Univ. of NSW 1972.
45. 'Integrated Hall current elements for high frequency field detection'. Proc. RRB Symp. On Microwave Components. Paper 10 p. 7, Adelaide, Feb 1972 (with R. Michael, S. Soegijoko).
46. 'PIN microwave diode switches'. Ibid. Paper 19 p. 14, Adelaide, Feb 1972 (with V. Svoboda, C. E. Brander).
47. 'Surface motion measurements on surface elastic waves'. App. Phys. Lett. 20 pp. 328-329, 15 April 1972 (with M. W. Lawrence).
48. 'Magnetically switched integrated SCR'. IEEE J. Solid State Circuits SC-8 pp. 175-180, April 1973 (with M. W. Neild).
49. 'Federal policy for industrial research and development in Australia'. Search 3 pp. 423-426, Dec. 1972.
50. 'Report of Committee appointed by Council to report on solar energy research in Australia'. Aust. Acad. Science. Sept 1973 (with C. N. Watson-Munro et al.).
51. 'Direct conversion of solar energy to electricity'. Proc. ISES Symp. 'Realistic Prospects for Solar Power in Australia'. p. 4, Melbourne, Nov. 1973.
52. 'Prospects for the direct conversion of solar energy to electricity'. AWA Tech. Review, 15 pp. 139-142, 1973.
53. 'Review of solar energy utilisation in Australia'. Proc. ISES Tech Meeting, Brighton, UK, 9 July 1974.
54. 'Recent developments in photovoltaic devices for solar energy conversion'. ISES Symp. 'Physics of Solar Energy Utilisation'. pp. 27-31, Sydney, 8 Nov. 1974.
55. 'The analysis of conical reflectors as concentrators for solar energy in photovoltaic and thermoelectric applications'. Ibid. pp. 32-38 (with P. E. Botrell).
56. 'Direct solar production of electricity'. In 'Solar Energy'. Eds H. Messel, S. T. Butler. pp. 275-292, Sydney, 1974.
57. 'Science in fact-finding'. Aust. J. Forensic Sciences. 8 (4) pp. 152-155, 1976.
58. 'Large open-circuit photo-voltages in silicon minority carrier MIS solar cells'. Proc. 12th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conf. pp. 896-899, Baton Rouge, 1976 (with M. A. Green, R. B. Godfrey).
59. 'Failsafe requirements of rad traffic signal equipment'. Proc. Aust Roads Res. Board, 8 pp. 27-35, 1976 (with H. S. Blanks, F. R. Hulscher, J. W. Syme).
60. 'Failsafe requirements of road traffic signal equipment'. Proc. 9th ARRB Conf. pp. 21-25, 1978 (with F. R. Hulscher, J. W. Syme).
61. 'Technology transfer in the electronics industry'. AWA Tech. Review 16 (3) 1977.
62. 'Short wavelength response of single and polycrystalline MIS solar cells'. Proc. 13th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conf., Washington, 1978 (with M. A. Green, R. B. Godfrey).
63. 'Science and technology transfer to Australia: Benefits, costs and problems'. Aust Acad. Sci. Symp. 'Science and Technology for what purpose?' pp. 273-279, Canberra 1979.
64. 'The Control of Research', AVCC Conf. Of Governing Bodies – University-Government Relations. No. 14 pp. 1-11, 1982.

Patents

(Note that the following patents were assigned to AWA Ltd. The Australian Patent No. or provisional No. is quoted, although some were also filed overseas)

• 247854: 'Semiconductor Devices' (1961)
• 258423: 'Cold cathodes' (1962)
• 273393: 'Purifying Process' (1962)
• 263758: 'Semiconductor device' (1963)
• 267605: 'Solid state particle detector' (1963)
• 264037: 'Cold cathodes' (1963)
• 280051: 'Semiconductor device' (1964)
• 143676: (NZ) 'Inductors for integrated circuits' (1965)
• 401105: 'Self-synchronising devices' (1965)
• 286874: 'Positional indicator of radiation' (1965)
• 418536: 'Reducing adherence of deposited layers' (1966)
• 149066: (NZ) 'Semiconductor diodes' (1966) (with G. Russell, J. Ziegler)
• 410923: 'Magnetoresistive devices' (1967)
• 400158: 'Intruder and fire alarm system' (1967)
• 404236: 'Improvements In quartz crystal units' (1968)
• 413304: as above
• 410154: 'Semiconductor transducer' (1968)
• 51676: 'Surface elastic wave devices' (1969)
• 52884: as above
• 54467: 'Inorganic electret' (1969)
• 54468: 'Capacitor transducer' (1969)
• 411997: 'Electret transducer' (1969)
• 54870: 'Improvements in capacitive transducers' (1969)
• 56441: 'Capacitive transducers' (1969)
• 57833: 'Transducer' (1969)
• 58896: 'Quartz crystals' 1969)
• 23075: 'Magnetic field sensor' (1970) (with G. P. Barnicoat)
• 25139: 'Positional indicator of radiation' (1970)
• 25822: 'Integrated capacitive transducers' (1970) (with D. R. Nicol)
• 27248: 'SEW oscillators' (1970) (with J. Barrett, J. Barraclough)
• 32810: 'Planar pn junctions' (1970) (with V. Svoboda)
• 32812: 'Magnetically controlled diode switches' (1970)
• 32811: 'Improvements in Hall elements' (1970)
• 39075: 'Integrating detection of radiation' (1971)
• 39162: 'Optical waveguide' (1971)
• 40765: 'SEW oscillator' (1971)
• PA5305: 'Magnetic field measurement' (1971)
• PA5363: 'Bulk elastic wave magnetometer' (1971) (with M. W. Lawrence)
• PA5364: 'SEW magnetometer' (1971) (with M. W. Lawrence)
• PA5365: 'Solid state compass' (1971) (with M. W. Lawrence)
• PA5366: 'Solid state magnetometer' (1971) (with M. W. Lawrence)
• PA6621: 'Improvements in Schottky diodes' (1971)
• 53583: 'Printing arrangement' (1972)
• 55726: 'Electret push-button switches' (1972) (with R. E. Collins)
• 55725: 'Improvements in light guides' (1972)
• PA4405: 'Article identification system' (1973)

Robert May was the leading theoretical ecologist of his generation. He started his career as a theoretical physicist and began the transition to ecology soon after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard. 

His mathematical analysis of the stability of ecological communities challenged orthodox views and spawned a new research agenda. He demonstrated that many different patterns of population fluctuations, including chaotic behaviour, could arise from simple mathematical models. 

Together with R. M. Anderson he transformed the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases. All of his work was characterised by his remarkable ability to reduce complex problems to their essential simplicities. His achievements were recognised by the award of numerous major international prizes. 

May also served as government chief scientific advisor (UK) between 1995 and 2000, and as president of the Royal Society between 2000 and 2005.

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About this memoir

This memoir was commissioned by Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society and is published here with minor amendments. It was published by the Royal Society online on 23 June 2021. It was also published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 33(1), 2022. It was written by Lord (John) Krebs, Michael Hassell and Sir Charles Godfray.

Lawrence (Laurie) Walter Nichol FAA was Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU) from 1988 to 1993, and before that, of the University of New England (UNE) from 1985 to 1988. His independent academic career began in 1963 at the ANU as a Research Fellow in the Department of Physical Biochemistry in the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR). The department was headed by Professor Alexander (Sandy) G. Ogston FRS. Thus, Laurie's career finally circled back, after overseas sabbaticals and other appointments at Australian universities, to the ANU.

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About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 29(1), 2018. It was written by Peter D. Jeffrey, Donald J. Winzor and Philip W. Kuchel.

Lawrie Lyons was a person of vision with a will to initiate and follow-through. This characteristic was evident in his scientific agenda, in his academic and Christian actions and in the care that he had for his family. These strands are inextricably woven in the texture of his life, some of which I have known since I met him as tutor before entering Sydney University in 1954 – but afterwards as his research student and as a friend and collaborator. It is from these perspectives that I write this biographical memoir.

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About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 27(1), 2016. It was written by John W. White, Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University.

Written by Barbara G. Briggs.

• Introduction
• Early life and education
• Botanist at the National Herbarium of New South Wales
• Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney
• Family life and interests
• In retirement
• The eucalypts (Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Angophora)
• Myrtales, myrtaceae and inflorescences
• Casuarinaceae
• Proteaceae
• Restionaceae and other monocotyledons
• A wealth of plant groups
• Theory of systematics
• Ecology and conservation
• Retrospect
• About this memoir
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Bibliography

Introduction

Lawrence Alexander Sidney (Lawrie) Johnson was a taxonomic botanist notable for the outstanding breadth of his interests and expertise, the rigour of his scientific approach, and the intensity with which he defended scientific conclusions and opinions. His major contributions came through broad synthesis so that systematic studies were integrated with evolutionary and ecological considerations. In a field often characterized by solitary workers, his investigations mostly involved colleagues, and he encouraged them to share his wide-ranging outlook while he also relied on their efforts. With colleagues he tackled many large plant groups, often delimiting taxa and resolving questions of relationships far beyond the extent that could be published in his lifetime: jointly authored publications continued to appear for some years after his death, since Ken Hill, Karen Wilson and I acknowledged that he had a substantial role in work still being finalized by each of us.

Johnson's achievements were recognized by many awards, to an extent remarkable for a scientist in the field of systematic botany and attached to one institution, the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, for the whole of his professional career, as Botanist (1948-72), Director (1972-85) and Honorary Research Associate (1986-97).

Since Johnson was well known for his strongly held views, passionately expressed, it was in character that, when he knew that he was terminally ill, he prepared the following statement to be read at his funeral. It sums up much of his life, with characteristic messages for those who heard it:

I have never been inclined to follow convention, and therefore will not be silent even at my own funeral. The first thing I have to say is in all sincerity to express my thanks for many opportunities to lead a satisfying life which, though not as long as I would have hoped, has been long enough for me to feel very fairly treated. These opportunities began with my deeply respected and loved parents, Sid and Emily Johnson, and my two sisters Valerie and Nancy. Teachers, especially my science teachers at school, Mr Clark and Mr Roberts, enabled me to perceive clearly in adolescence the absurdity of all forms of superstition and fanciful belief. They were followed at the University of Sydney by some outstanding teachers at that level, especially Eric Ashby (later Lord Ashby) and Sir Rutherford Robertson. These men showed me that botany was indeed a science, and I abandoned my first love, chemistry, to follow botany, although in a field very different from those of Ashby and Rutherford [Robertson].

In my first year botany lab I had the great good fortune to meet Merle, who has been the epitome of the word steadfastness throughout our subsequent lives. Our five children, Chris, Sylvia, Nicholas, Quentin and Sandy [Alexander], have borne with us, and we with them for up to 45 years, and have been a great support during my final illness. I love them all, though they may not always believe it.

Our personal friends have helped us in our lives for many years, and are immensely valued by us. On the professional side, I pay tribute to all my predecessors as Directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, with a special tribute to Robert Henry Anderson who encouraged me to join the Sydney Botanic Gardens, and who was, as a canny Scot, a friend as well as a mentor at all times. Among many others at the RBG, my very special mention [and] appreciation must go to Dr Barbara Briggs who has been my close research and administrative colleague, and the very best personal friend since 1960. You will note that I do not say 'managerial colleague' – I have found that administrators, though they can be beastly, are not as manifestly so [as] those who call themselves managers.

Good friends and stimulating colleagues have been many throughout Australia and the world, and I am indeed sorry that I cannot continue to join in research with them. I conclude with two more saddening observations. First, the RBG has been abominably treated by politicians and botanically totally ignorant managers over the past year. This was not formerly the case and, in the days of such enlightened politicians as Neville Wran, the right sort of people were allowed to pursue the proper aims and objects of a botanic gardens. Second, a larger manifestation of these tendencies is a worldwide concentration on managerialism, a superficial approach and indeed a cruel perversion of sensible and decent management.

I have not seen an effective countering of this approach, but I can safely say that I have never met a decent managerialist yet. I hope, indeed, that some of you will live to see the change that must come.

I hope that I have not offended too many people in saying that since my eyes were opened in adolescence I have seen no reason to need religious belief, and particularly the notion of continuation of 'life' after death. I have been happy to accept death as the natural end of life, which treats some of us well, and some of us ill. It has treated me well.

I thank you all for coming and wish you satisfaction in your lives.(1)

Early life and education

Born in the Sydney suburb of Cheltenham on 26 June 1925, Lawrie was the third child of Algernon Sidney (Sid) Johnson, an accountant in the hospitals section of the New South Wales Public Service and Emily Margaret Johnson (née Manson), with older sisters Valerie and Nancy. He was early recognised as a bright child, attending Beecroft Public School and Parramatta High School. His father died when he was nine years old but his mother encouraged his academic abilities and, since early teenage years, he planned to study science, keen to understand and classify features of the world around him. Throughout his life he expressed gratitude to teachers whom he respected and who fostered his academic interests. He enjoyed the bushland then persisting around Cheltenham and Devlins Creek, but his early interest focused on chemistry and he was equal first in the State in that subject at the Leaving Certificate examination in 1941.

Enrolling at the University of Sydney, having been awarded a scholarship, he took Botany with no intention of continuing in that discipline, but the lively minds in the Botany Department at that time attracted him to the subject. He was fortunate there to meet Professor Eric Ashby (later Lord Ashby), plant physiologist Bob (later Sir Rutherford) Robertson, ecologist Noel Beadle and geneticist Newton Barber. This was a time of wide-ranging, indeed re-awakening, interest in Australia's flora and vegetation, and botanists were searching for understanding of processes of evolution and variation, seen in terms of ecology and physiology. In his final undergraduate research year he began a taxonomic revision of Casuarina (Casuarinaceae) under the supervision of Patrick Brough, but with advice and guidance from R.H. (Bob) Anderson and Joyce Vickery at the National Herbarium of New South Wales at Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens. The project proved a far larger undertaking than his supervisor ever imagined and studies in Casuarinaceae continued among his interests throughout his career. In 1971 he was awarded a DSc by the University of Sydney.

Botanist at the National Herbarium of New South Wales

Graduating with First Class Honours in 1948, he joined the staff of the National Herbarium in Sydney. The Herbarium was the scientific arm of the Royal Botanic Gardens, administered as part of the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. During the directorship of Joseph Henry Maiden (1896-1924) the Herbarium had been founded, developed and linked to other organizations world-wide through Maiden's extensive correspondence and one visit to Britain. Maiden had been extraordinarily energetic with programmes of community lectures and taking a leading part in Sydney's emerging scientific associations. As a result the Gardens and its science had held high profile and esteem.(2) This had sadly deteriorated over subsequent decades so that Johnson joined a small group of botanists there at a time when taxonomy was unfashionable and Sydney's herbarium seemed something of a scientific backwater. An injection of young staff was, however, already starting a renewal after a less productive period.

Johnson realized the importance of collaboration with scientists elsewhere and soon developed close links with botanist colleagues Spencer Smith-White (later professor of genetics at the University of Sydney) and J.L. (Jack) Willis at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (forerunner of the Powerhouse Museum) in Sydney, as well as phytochemist Howard McKern. Soon an even more productive collaboration was established with Lindsay Pryor, then Director of Parks and Gardens in the Australian Capital Territory, later foundation professor of botany at the Australian National University.

At the Herbarium he took over curatorial management of a wide range of plant groups. He and his colleagues set about improving the botanical order and information content of the collection, critically assessing the classification of many plant groups and the identification of the specimens. Through such work with the specimen collections, field studies and providing identifications for enquirers, Johnson acquired a remarkably wide knowledge of vascular plants in Australia and the rest of the world, knowledge he generously shared with others. Always he was intensely aware that the specimen collections were exemplars of the populations in nature; for this reason he sorted the collections geographically in detail, so that they would reveal trends and discontinuities in the species' distribution.

Since a responsibility of the Herbarium was to provide sources of information on the plants of New South Wales, a Flora of the State was begun, issued in segments from 1961 to 1984 (Contributions from the National Herbarium of N.S.W.-Flora Series). With hindsight this was a misguided project, scholarly and authoritative but so detailed that progress was painfully slow; too technical for non-specialist users but lacking some features of full taxonomic revisions. Good work was done for the project but progress was almost in spite of the concept of the series. Johnson's treatment of the cycads [13] was one of the first and most thorough of the series but, characteristically, he accompanied it by a more notable work on cycads world-wide [12].

Johnson's publication list and reputation among systematic botanists grew and he was in 1962 appointed as Australian Botanical Liaison Officer, a twelve-month posting to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He was a member of the Flora of Australia Committee of ANZAAS and had been part of a delegation in 1960 to the Prime Minister's Department seeking support for a national Flora project. He was later appointed to the committee that eventually led to success in that aim, the Interim Council of the Australian Biological Resources Study. During 1973-5 that Council set guidelines, helped to make clear to the Australian Government the great need for the Flora of Australia, and visited institutions in major centres to discuss biologists' needs and to promote the new projects envisaged. The Flora programme began to receive Australian Government funding in 1979 and has been acknowledged internationally as highly effective, its success partly based on the associated grants programme and the establishment of a core of editorial staff overseeing the work.

Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

In 1968 Johnson had been appointed as Deputy Chief Botanist, the deputy to the Botanic Gardens Director, but when Knowles Mair retired in 1970, Johnson did not seek the senior position. He had seen directors of the Gardens submerged in administrative and horticultural detail and it was only later, when he acted briefly in the position, that he realized how the directorship could be handled differently. He saw that change was possible with a clear concept of the role of the organization and a vision for its future [82]. When the position again became vacant in 1972 he was appointed to it.

Johnson was fortunate that, during much of his thirteen years as Director, Neville Wran was Premier of New South Wales. Johnson sought any opportunities to interest Wran in the Gardens. For his part, Wran still remembered his own role as counsel assisting Lionel Murphy, barrister for the Public Service Association, in a case brought by that union before the New South Wales Industrial Commission many years earlier. That case reviewed salaries of Scientific Officers in the New South Wales Public Service, and Gardens' botanists had taken a prominent role. In 1980 Wran transferred the Gardens into the Premier's Department administration, to join with museums and other cultural organizations. The Gardens was Australia's oldest continuing scientific institution, predating modern administrative structures but, since the establishment of the New South Wales Department of Agriculture, had been administered as one of its agencies. It had been seen as peripheral to Agriculture's role but was instantly 'at home' among the diverse cultural agencies.

Johnson grasped the new opportunities with energy. The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust was set up, government funding was provided for a new building to house the herbarium and scientific programmes, freeing much-needed space for education programmes, visitor services and the necessarily increasing administrative staff. Community support was fostered and channelled into an active 'Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens' organization. An education programme for school students was initiated and, with the start of volunteer programmes, there were guided tours of the Gardens and exhibitions on botanical and biodiversity conservation themes. The first of the Tropical Centre glasshouses (the Pyramid) was completed and a larger glasshouse (the Arc) planned and funded. Preparation for the XIII International Botanical Congress in Sydney in 1981 was another commitment for much of the scientific staff.

Funding was obtained for the development of a satellite garden at Mount Tomah on the escarpment of the Blue Mountains as a State-Commonwealth bilateral programme, associated with Australia's Bicentennial celebrations. Also funded was the development of the Mount Annan Garden in Sydney's south-west, to display and conserve Australian native plant species. The Mount Tomah Garden site had been donated to the State by the Brunet family in the 1960s, to be part of the Gardens' organization, but its development had languished with few resources for development. The Mount Annan site was land previously resumed by the State Government for its scenic and open-space value and selected by the Gardens staff as highly suitable for an Australian plant garden. The documentation and vouchering of plant accessions at Mount Annan set new standards in living collections databases. Both new gardens were opened after Johnson's retirement, as part of the Bicentennial celebrations, Tomah in late 1987 and Annan in 1988; but the main elements of planning, construction and planting had been put in place in his time.

In contrast to this expansion, Johnson encouraged the Government to set up a separate administration for Sydney's large Centennial Park, hitherto part of the Gardens' responsibilities. He considered its largely recreational and open-space functions as very different from the botanical and educational roles of a botanic garden. He did, however, value Sydney's Domain as a vital buffer that surrounded the Gardens on three sides and he argued strongly against any proposed encroachments on it. With the advent of Sydney's Summer Festival, and despite some initial reluctance, he welcomed the increasing use of the Domain for open-air art exhibitions and large events such as opera and symphony concerts.

A new project was initiated, with his enthusiastic encouragement, to produce a Flora of New South Wales, in a far more user-friendly style than the earlier Flora Series. Gwen Harden was appointed as editor and project leader and the Flora was produced in four large volumes in successive years from 1990 to 1993, making information and means of identification available for more than 6,000 species of native and naturalized plants of the State.(3) Johnson was not so positive about the development of computerized databases for the herbarium collection and living plant collections data, but he accepted his staff's advice and these were established. He strongly supported women horticulturalists joining the Gardens' staff, entering an area that – unlike the scientific section – had been an all-male preserve.

Such a rapid pace of development, especially in the latter years of his directorship, transformed the organization, but the resources of funding and especially of staff were stretched thin. As a result, he regretted that there was some reduction in horticultural standards in the Gardens in Sydney, but he hoped that a period of consolidation and remedying of such problems would follow this developmental phase. Always he spoke most enthusiastically about the scientific role of the Royal Botanic Gardens, but much of his legacy there is in its new satellite gardens and community outreach.

During this time he did not abandon research but relied increasingly on co-operation with colleagues. In other cases he encouraged staff botanists to take over work in plant groups with which he had previously been concerned. He continued to be interested in Proteaceae, Myrtaceae, Cyperaceae, cycadophytes and the genus Grevillea, although colleagues Peter Weston, Peter Wilson, Karen Wilson, Ken Hill and Don McGillivray respectively took up research and established their positions as authorities in these groups, building on his earlier work in each case.

Family life and interests

On 18 November 1950 Lawrie married Merle Margaret Asta Hodge whom he had met as a first year Botany student, although Merle did not continue with her course. They subsequently lived mostly at Northbridge, a northern Sydney suburb. Merle was an outstanding support in Lawrie's career, typing many of his earlier manuscripts and tolerating his long hours at the office, especially when he maintained his research programmes despite heavy administrative responsibilities. Her support for his career was most dramatically shown when the opportunity came for him in 1962 to take the position of Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, involving an absence from Sydney of fifteen months. The miserly policy of the New South Wales Government at the time did not provide adequate travelling support for dependants, although this was a man with wife and four, soon to be five, children. Merle steadfastly insisted that he should take the position while she and the children remained in Sydney. At that time they did not know that Merle would later work in an airline administration, earning opportunities for much travel by all the family. It was Merle's outstanding hospitality and concern for people that kept together a wide circle of friends, especially keeping in touch with friends from school and university days.

When Lawrie's long working hours were set aside for time with their children, Christopher, Sylvia, Nicholas, Quentin and Alexander (Sandy), they often jointly constructed magnificent large creations of meccano or set up model trains that ran on lines that looped from room to room in the house for days. At other times all the family, or one of the children with their father, went travelling back-roads and camping in the bush, rarely turning for home until dusk on the last day. There were also family summer holidays near the beach at Hat Head or South West Rocks on the north coast of New South Wales and Saturday mornings watching the sons playing soccer. Chris, Nicholas and Sandy later worked in various aspects of information technology, Chris at the University of Technology, Sydney. Quentin became a fire fighter in the New South Wales fire brigades. Sylvia's career in materials science, with a focus on ceramics, took her to California and distinguished roles at the Stanford Research Institute and NASA.

Johnson's energy and achievements did not come from an especially robust constitution. Through much of his career, Johnson suffered from an anxiety condition and his ability to sustain such a level of activity was partly a credit to modern pharmaceuticals. A whiplash neck injury resulted from a car accident while returning from a scientific conference; this frequently gave trouble but did not deter him from active fieldwork. For many years he also suffered from a persistent stomach ulcer. Earlier, during his first year as an undergraduate, a diagnosis of tuberculosis, which more severely affected his sister Nancy, had interrupted his studies. That enforced break, until he resumed his course a year later, was used to read a wide range of literature. Years later he observed that this interruption had been beneficial in the long term, broadening his knowledge in a way that would have been unlikely in the midst of studies or the demands of a career. Aided by secretaries and colleagues, through much of his career, including his busy years as Director, he managed to 'protect' time for a brief siesta after lunch on most days. Then he would customarily work far into the evening.

Apart from botany, one of Johnson's long-standing interests was in comparative languages. The processes of development, modification and migration of languages revealed many fascinating similarities to processes of biological evolution. Respect for other languages, for him, included correct pronunciation and he persevered in trying to correct the pronunciation of foreign words and botanical names by colleagues. A guide to the pronunciation of botanical names was one outcome [110]. He studied Russian at evening courses and took great interest in languages wherever he travelled. He frequently kept his colleagues amused with limericks and other verses.

Another interest fostered by evening courses was mathematics, at the time when newer mathematical concepts were beginning to be taught in schools. For some years in mid-career he took a serious interest in number theory and topology, finding that they involved satisfyingly elegant concepts. These studies stimulated him to analyse the theoretical basis of the numerical pheneticists in the 1960s and to publish his comprehensive rejection of that approach [32].

Other lifelong interests – all actively shared with Merle – were in classical music, railways (an interest dating from school days) especially historic trains, tennis with his family and younger friends, travel, and good food and wine. Visits or excursions with his grandchildren, six in the Sydney region and two in California, were also much enjoyed in later years.

In retirement

Johnson did not intend to retire in 1985 but Government policies of that time strongly favoured youth employment and he found that retirement at age 60 years (rather than the expected 65) was demanded. This was in sharp contrast to policies opposed to age-discrimination in employment implemented only a few years later. Retiring when many developments that he had started were yet to come to fruition was a bitter matter, and this coloured his view for some years.

On retirement he was appointed by the Royal Botanic Gardens Trust as Director Emeritus and as an Honorary Research Associate; facilities for research were provided. He continued to keep better informed on current scientific literature than many much younger botanists and was a source of vast knowledge and help to young staff members at the Herbarium. He greatly welcomed the development of a DNA laboratory for molecular plant systematics at the Royal Botanic Gardens and actively followed literature in this important field. He recognized that macromolecular systematics was now the most important source of new phylogenetic understanding. In conjunction with critically assessed morphology and phylogenetic reasoning, this gave systematics a new excitement for him, as well as for others.

Johnson continued to serve on the Council of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, of which he had for two terms been President, and as a member of the Rudi Lemberg Travelling Fellowship Committee of the Australian Academy of Science. He also regularly participated in international congresses, and served on committees of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and also the International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology. Whenever possible he took the opportunity of congress excursions to gain wider familiarity with vegetation and floras world-wide. His last, a 'Southern Connections' meeting in January 1997, focusing on Southern Hemisphere biota, was in Valdivia, Chile, with a week-long excursion across the Andes. His final illness was diagnosed a few days after returning from this travel.

To continue effectively in research, Johnson required access to the collections at the Herbarium and contact with colleagues with whom he still had collaborative projects. He became increasingly out of sympathy with trends in management and priorities at the Gardens and made this apparent in often outspoken comments. The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust expressed its displeasure at these comments but let the arrangement continue since Director Professor Carrick Chambers had championed the value of his continued scientific work. After a change of senior management, however, his status as Honorary Research Associate was terminated in 1996. This 'dishonourable discharge' from the place he had served throughout his career caused him much bitterness although he was encouraged by expressions of support from colleagues within the Royal Botanic Gardens and internationally.

His status as an Associate was restored in early 1997, but by then he had received the diagnosis of brain tumours that had spread from a melanoma removed the previous year. After radiotherapy he made a brief improvement and returned for some weeks to botanical work at the Gardens. He was working on a manuscript on Eucalyptus to within a few hours of his last conscious time. He died at Royal North Shore Hospital, in the Sydney suburb of St Leonards a few days later, on 1August 1997.

The eucalypts (Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Angophora)

It is with the classification of the eucalypts that Johnson is especially associated. Eucalyptus (almost 800 species(4)), together with the allied genera Angophora (15 spp.) and Corymbia (113 spp., segregated from Eucalyptus by Hill and Johnson [118]) form Australia's most prominent tree group. Johnson took an early interest in them because of their importance in characterizing Australian plant communities. Enlisted to help when Bob Anderson was revising his Trees of New South Wales,(5) Johnson soon became the Herbarium's expert on the eucalypts and many other tree groups. Through fieldwork and study of specimens, he realised that there were many species that had not previously been recognized as distinct. These differed from others not only in their morphological features but in distribution and ecology.

Together with Lindsay Pryor from Canberra, Johnson made many field visits, eventually attempting to see as many as possible of the species in their natural habitats. With Pryor's colleague at the Australian National University, Dugal Paton, they visited remote parts of Australia using light aircraft and Dugal's expertise as a pilot with flying experience in the Second World War.

In 1971 Pryor and Johnson commented that 'It is likely that relatively few taxa still await discovery as a result of exploration in botanically little-known areas' [35], but they were proved wrong by their own further studies of existing collections as well as by much further fieldwork. Solely or with colleagues, Johnson was responsible for naming some 180 eucalypt species(4) – mostly after 1971 – and 69 new subspecies, as well as generically reclassifying 107 species; but his conclusions about eucalypts were equally influential above the species level. He sought to characterize the major groups that represent the principal lines of evolution among them. Johnson and Pryor concluded that the eucalypts consisted of some eight major groups which they informally termed subgenera and discussed [35]. This work included a classificatory listing of all the species recognized at the time, and discussions of character states and variation patterns among species. Here they recognised seven informal 'subgenera' and devised a code (comparable to an acronym of four to six letters) to indicate the classification of each species at all ranks. As noted by Brooker, 'This work which divided the genus [Eucalyptus] into seven subgenera, proved to be a milestone in Eucalyptus biology and became the benchmark for all eucalypt scholars.' (6)

The classification in that work was mutually agreed by both authors but depended most heavily on Johnson's work. He did more than anyone else until the late 1990s to distinguish the major evolutionary lineages among the eucalypts [40, 55]. His clarifying these enabled other later researchers, especially those concerned with DNA sequencing, floral development and ecological adaptation, to focus their efforts appropriately. Such subsequent investigations confirmed many relationships deduced from his morphological studies.(7) Pryor took a leading role in pointing out the ecological and distributional differences among the major groups [70], and these have been followed up by further studies by others.(8) In studies of the Myrtaceae and Myrtales, Johnson drew attention to the eucalypt lineage as one of the major ancient evolutionary branches within its large family [80].

Johnson was precise and thorough in nomenclature, orthography and typification at the predominant levels of family, genus and species and served on international committees in these areas. However, he regarded the rigid application of the rule of priority as irrelevant and time-wasting at intermediate levels that derive their significance from circumscription (content) in a particular classification. In this spirit, publishing with Pryor, he set up a formal and precise system at these levels in the classification of the eucalypts, but it was extracodical – not complying with the priority rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature [35]. The Pryor and Johnson extracodical subgenera have been widely used by researchers, but were largely avoided by D.J. and S.M. Carr, with whom Johnson strongly and openly disagreed on several aspects of eucalypt relationships – though Johnson told colleagues that the areas of agreement between them actually far exceeded the areas of dispute. Johnson was disappointed that other botanists clung to those formalities that he regarded as stultifying and that the subgenera were not more widely referred to in publications. Similarly he hoped that the classificatory codes would be widely applied, since he saw them as a simple way to indicate the lineages and affinities. However, he had underestimated the extent to which new species would be recognized in the near future and the classification modified, mostly by himself and colleagues, so that the codes did not always serve as stable summaries of the classification in the way originally intended; he therefore accepted that their introduction had perhaps been somewhat premature. They were, however, very helpful references for use in activities such as herbarium curation.

Disappointed in the extent of use of the subgeneric names, and convinced that the diversity within the eucalypts was greater than within many groups of genera, Johnson for many years considered that the eucalypts should be divided into several separate genera. The prospect of eight genera, or as many as eleven, in place of Eucalyptus alarmed amateur enthusiasts concerned with Australian plants, and popular journals carried articles championing the status quo. Johnson argued to his colleagues and in print [87] that the case for recognizing separate genera, and so changing plant names, should rest on the same types of evidence, whether one was dealing with such a national icon as Eucalyptus or with less charismatic plants such as saltbushes, heaths or rushes, where extensive name-changes created no such outcry.

Eventually Johnson, with his colleague Ken Hill, concluded that the major evolutionary lineages within the eucalypts would be reasonably represented in the classification by the recognition of one new genus, Corymbia, in addition to Eucalyptus and Angophora. In a substantial paper they formally described Corymbia and transferred to it 80 species of bloodwoods and ghost gums, together with 33 newly recognised species [118]. DNA sequencing studies by Udovicic and Ladiges subsequently confirmed that Corymbia is markedly distinct from Eucalyptus and less closely allied to it than to Angophora.(7) Such genetical distinction implies a long separate evolutionary history. Corymbia has been widely adopted by botanists but opinion was not unanimous. Ian Brooker, influential eucalypt specialist at the Australian National Herbarium, CSIRO, Canberra, argued against its adoption(6) but there has been convincing endorsement, based on multiple data sets, of the distinction between Corymbia and Eucalyptus by Ladiges and Udovicic.(9)

In his work on the eucalypts Johnson was greatly assisted by Ken Hill and earlier by Don Blaxell (later Assistant Director Living Collections, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, and subsequently Honorary Research Associate, returning to studies on eucalypts with Hill). Expert technical assistance from Leonie Stanberg, and earlier from Lani Retter, was important to the progress of the research. Johnson's strongly held views sometimes contributed to difficult relations with other botanists, especially in the eucalypts, but younger colleagues learnt much from him and he relied on their work, especially when administrative responsibilities greatly limited his research time. As a result of this teamwork, Hill and Blaxell, with assistance from Stanberg, continued after Johnson's death to publish work that had been initiated with him [128, 134, 144].

Myrtales, myrtaceae and inflorescences

Studies on eucalypts naturally involved Johnson in questions of how this lineage related to other groups within Myrtaceae. Also, comparisons of inflorescence structures in this and other families made clear to him that some terms, such as panicle, were used to describe a variety of fundamentally different structures. Working with me, and recording observations in simple stylised diagrams, he studied inflorescences throughout a comprehensive range of Myrtaceae. In works by Troll(10) we found a more precise descriptive system than any available in English-language publications. However, our studies on trees and shrubs mostly of warm temperate and tropical regions suggested trends different from those envisaged by Troll. We suggested that undue emphasis on European cool temperate herbs had led Troll and his colleagues to mis-read the direction of some trends.

This work led to a substantial paper on Myrtaceae that included a critique of current inflorescence terminology and introduced new terms to facilitate comparison of inflorescences [61]. We realized that it would be necessary to keep publishing on inflorescences if these new concepts were to be spread more widely. The diversity in Myrtaceae had given an excellent basis for reviewing inflorescence structures, but was not sufficient to promote the general applicability of the new concepts. Some of the main concepts and terminology were taken up and applied, for example by Grimes(11) and Weston, in groups such as Fabaceae and Proteaceae, but pressure of other commitments prevented us from continuing work in interpreting inflorescence structures.

Johnson and I returned to the phylogeny of the Myrtaceae, in a study broadened to cover Myrtales [80], using the laborious procedures of the CLAX programme (see below) in its non-computerized form. This gave some novel results that have since been supported by DNA studies. These include distinguishing a Myrtacean clade including Psiloxylon, Heteropyxis and Myrtaceae within Myrtales and abandoning the subfamilies Myrtoideae and Leptospermoideae. We emphasised the lack of close relationship between the sometimes confused Eugenia and Syzygium, the distinctness and antiquity of the eucalypt lineage, and the polyphyletic nature of the assemblage of genera formerly referred to as the Chamelaucioideae. Not all the relationships postulated have survived in the DNA era, but the hypotheses provided a basis for much subsequent work(12)[125].

Casuarinaceae

As mentioned above, a revision of Casuarina was Johnson's first botanical research project. What was intended as a year's undergraduate study became a lifetime interest, although only intermittently active. As with the eucalypts, his work encompassed the levels of both species and genera. Karen Wilson became the colleague on whom he greatly depended in this work. Alone or with Wilson, he described three new genera and many new species, as well as providing treatments for international compendia, the Flora of Australia and several other Floras [64, 73, 76, 86, 88, 92, 93, 97,135].

Pressures of time when book deadlines conflicted with demanding administrative duties led to the new genera being very briefly described with little stated justification and this slowed their acceptance by other botanists. In this case the common morphological features of the family are so conspicuous that they tend to overshadow the substantial differences between the genera. Johnson's work in clarifying the species taxonomy gave a foundation for studies by Barlow of chromosome numbers and apomixis(13) and work on Casuarinaceae is being continued by Karen Wilson.

Proteaceae

Early in his career, Johnson embarked on a revision of Persoonia and realised that relationships at the generic level in Proteaceae were much in need of study. Work on Persoonia proceeded intermittently over a long period, eventually much of it being brought to publication with colleague Peter Weston taking the leading role [101, 117, 122].

Chromosome numbers had been shown by Lancaster and Smith-White(14) to be informative in elucidating evolutionary relationships in the family, so Johnson enlisted my help to determine chromosome numbers of additional genera. This led to a wide-ranging collaboration in addressing the subfamilial, tribal and generic classification and evolutionary relationships. Since Proteaceae is almost confined to the Southern Hemisphere and is represented on almost all southern land masses, clarification of relationships among the genera is highly relevant to the historical biogeography of these lands. At the time of our first publication on this subject [24], in which I took a minor role, geological opinion on plate tectonics was still divided, with a few authoritative voices arguing that continental movement was unproven. Unfortunately, this limited the nature and significance of the biogeographical conclusions that we then presented.

Returning to this subject after a decade [53], the major plate tectonic framework had been established and it was clear that Proteaceae revealed numerous intercontinental links that could be correlated with the ages of separation of the various fragments of Gondwana. Hypotheses were presented of the sequence of diversification of various lineages in relation to opportunities for migration. Since then, the techniques of DNA sequencing have become widely applied to plant phylogeny and findings based on analysis of sequence data for Proteaceae have clarified relationships, superseding some earlier conclusions and revealing additional intercontinental links.(15) Johnson welcomed the new investigations but was gratified that our hypotheses were still serving as a starting point for such new studies decades later.

As in much of Johnson's work at the upper taxonomic levels, these papers on Proteaceae are concise summaries of a great deal of information that was not presented in detail but that was rigorously compiled and critically assessed. To illustrate and describe in detail the floral structures that were dissected or fruits that were sectioned, for example, could have been useful, but it would have vastly increased the work.

Restionaceae and other monocotyledons

In the 1960s Obed Evans, formerly Senior Technician at the Botany Department of the University of Sydney, joined the Herbarium staff to assist with work on the Flora of New South Wales series. Evans worked with Johnson on New South Wales Arecaceae (Palmae), Philydraceae, Lemnaceae, Cyperaceae and Restionaceae [15, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27]. In the very large family Cyperaceae their joint work covered only Eleocharis and some Cyperus species [31, 43], but Johnson continued the study, assisted by Karen Wilson. With increasing expertise, and since Johnson had many projects on hand, Wilson soon took the dominant role and became the Australian authority on much of the Cyperaceae. Meanwhile Johnson had also taken up work on Juncaceae. When he distinguished and described 23 new Australian Juncus species [23, 98, 109], some again questioned whether he was a taxonomic 'splitter', especially since several of the new species frequently occurred together, where disturbance favoured spread of the species and masked ecological distinctions. Others experts on Juncaceae, however, such as Elizabeth Edgar at DSIR Christchurch, New Zealand, were in full agreement with his decisions. Wilson worked with Johnson on Juncaceae also and continues that study.

Johnson and Evans found that stem anatomy in Restionaceae was very informative in distinguishing species and that the species customarily included within Lepyrodia were a disparate group [21]. To gain further information, I joined in with chromosome number determinations. The results were perplexing, so Johnson and I widened the investigation to include the numerous Western Australian species. The study, begun in the early 1960s, was repeatedly set aside in favour of work on Proteaceae and Myrtaceae, but proceeded intermittently and was taken up again in the 1990s. Mostly species distinctions were clear-cut (though many were newly recognised), but settling on an adequate generic classification proved difficult, although it was clear that existing classifications were greatly at variance with relationships among the species. As a result, manuscript names or other informal names were applied and used for up to twenty years(16,) (17) and the patience of other botanists was sorely tested waiting for such names to be formalized. In particular, Cutler, studying the anatomy of Restionaceae at Kew, noted numerous discrepancies between his findings and the existing classification(18) but was largely restrained from making taxonomic changes because the Australian members were under study by Johnson and Briggs. Eventually we finalized a new generic classification of these and some allied groups, under pressure for this to be available for two book projects [132, 136]. By this time botanists at the University of Western Australia and at Kings Park and Botanic Gardens, Perth – John Pate, Kathy Meney and Kingsley Dixon – were studying reproduction, regeneration after fire, and aspects of the physiology of the species(17) and had discovered additional new taxa. Collaboration and fieldwork with these botanists and with Peter Linder from Cape Town, South Africa, proved to be very stimulating and added new dimensions to the study. Especially during field work, Pate and Johnson delighted in matching wits, with puns to the fore. As grass-like plants, lacking conspicuous flowers, and occurring mostly on low-nutrient soils, this had been an extremely neglected group until recent decades. Our studies revealed 54 species that had not been botanically named.

Describing the new genera and necessary changes to the classification of many of the named species followed after Johnson's death [126, 127, 133, 142, 143]. Descriptions of the remaining species that we had jointly distinguished, as well as preparation of a treatment of the family for the Flora of Australia, continue now with further 'Briggs and Johnson' papers expected.

In parallel with the morphological study of Restionaceae, DNA sequencing of representative species was begun, with expert advice from John Thomson and Peter Weston and assistance from Simon Gilmore, and later Adam Marchant and Carolyn Porter. Johnson enthusiastically supported this development, believing that analyses of macromolecular data gave much improved insights into phylogeny. He did not live to see the publication of the main results from this study to date,(19) but was convinced by early findings that the genera Hopkinsia and Lyginia should be excluded from Restionaceae. He therefore shares authorship of the paper establishing the new families Hopkinsiaceae and Lyginiaceae [140], members of the order Poales (as is Restionaceae) and most closely allied to Anarthriaceae; the recognition of these new families has been criticized by Chase et al.(20)

A wealth of plant groups

The groups already mentioned were major themes of Johnson's studies but, especially in his early years, he investigated a wide range of plant groups, making extensive and highly informative, but sometimes almost unreadable, annotations on the herbarium folders. In Oleaceae he published a review of the generic classification of world-wide relevance [10]. Indeed a study of the phylogeny and classification of Oleaceae more than four decades later (21) cited Johnson's work as the most recent review of the entire family and supported many of his conclusions when discussing new findings. Some other groups he investigated significantly, but then passed on his findings as notes or in discussion to others who had more prospect of bringing research to fruition. The value of such preliminary work was acknowledged by Bryan Barlow in Loranthaceae and Alma Lee in Xanthorrhoeaceae.

Johnson's accounts of the families of cycads and the Zamiaceae of Australia [12] and of the New South Wales members [13] have been mentioned. Although this was early in his career, he did not hesitate to put forward a new classification on a world-wide basis. He published a review and synopsis of the classification of the families and genera of the Cycadales throughout their range, describing a new family, Stangeriaceae, for a genus of south-east Africa, a new tribe for a genus of Central America and another tribe that included genera in Australia and Africa. Comments were made on the morphological terminology appropriate to this plant group, and the revision of the Australian species of Zamiaceae required the unravelling of complex synonomy. Johnson's work remained of sufficient note that he and colleague Karen Wilson were, decades later, asked to contribute the whole taxonomic treatment of cycads to an international collaborative project [95].

Johnson has been considered by some to be a 'splitter', applying an unduly narrow species concept, but many more Australian Zamiaceae are now recognised than in his treatment.(22) Work on cycads is being continued by his colleague Ken Hill and part, but not all, of the increase in numbers has come with new discoveries resulting from easier access to much of northern Australia.

Theory of systematics

Johnson's interest in the theory of systematics was demonstrated in his most substantial early publication [12] where he outlined the theoretical foundations that guided his study of cycads world-wide. In subsequent publications he continued to ensure that underlying assumptions were made explicit, although this was not then commonly done by botanical taxonomists.

His main theoretical contribution was in the late 1960s when taxonomy was influenced by new developments that received the name 'numerical taxonomy'. Data bases of the characters of 'operational taxonomic units' were being developed and computer processing gave new options for analysing these data. Numerical taxonomy used similarity measures to build 'trees' of relationships. Johnson entered the scene as a critic of these approaches, with added confidence from studies recently made to gain familiarity with modern mathematical concepts. He concluded that numerical taxonomy was based on false assumptions and published a detailed critique of overall similarity and general-purpose classifications [32]. This was so highly regarded that the prestigious journal Systematic Zoology took the unusual step of reprinting it with a short addendum [34]. Hull, writing more than thirty years later, observed that 'I find his objections to be as well taken now as they were then'.(23) Hull also noted that the pioneers of numerical taxonomy, Sokal and Sneath, 'would have very much liked to persuade Johnson to join with them in their efforts to improve taxonomic principles. They failed. Johnson joined no "school" of taxonomy but tended to his Eucalypts'.

Johnson rejected overall similarity but later saw that there was a better way to determine relationships between organisms, based on the common possession of evolutionary advancements (now known as synapomorphies). He developed this approach independently of the works of Willi Hennig, which he did not read until much later, if at all. He developed an algorithm and procedure for data analysis by grouping first the taxa with the largest number of synapomorphies and progressively adding those with fewer common advanced features. This sequential method, as he claimed, reflected the procedure of systematists building up a structure of relationships from the closely similar to the more dissimilar. This procedure was outlined and used, with laborious manual manipulation, to develop phylogenetic trees for parts of the Proteaceae [53] and the Myrtales and Myrtaceae [80]. His eldest son, Christopher, then a research student in computer science, produced a computerized version of the analysis procedure (termed CLAX), but this was never fully developed. Soon cladistics was becoming widely established, with its theoretical and practical basis developed by others, and Swofford was producing programmes with a range of options that could be selected to match the assumptions on which the analysis was to be based. Johnson's contribution to the demise of numerical phenetics was significant in its time, but CLAX had impact only through the contribution it made to phylogenetic understanding of the groups to which it was applied.

Johnson [90] distinguished between two scientific approaches: 'Some scientists are analysts, strongly influenced by recent philosophies of science and concerned to demonstrate their purity of method, however inadequate the method may be in its coverage of the phenomena of nature. Others are synthesists, less concerned with rigour or the appearance of it, but certainly not less concerned with truth. The latter are interested in forming a picture of what really happens, or happened, in the light of all reasonably reliable evidence that they can bring to bear.' Hull (23) observed that both sorts of scientists are needed if science is to progress and that Johnson clearly saw himself as of the second sort.

Ecology and conservation

Johnson was largely responsible for initiating ecological work in his organisation,(24) with a vegetation mapping programme that provided baseline data about the plant communities of regions surveyed. He also encouraged the Royal Botanic Gardens to submit comments on the major environmental issues of the day, such as the conservation of rainforests, better land management in the Western Division, or recommendations of specific areas to be conserved. Occasionally he had actively to support his staff when they made statements in scientific publications or to the media that displeased senior officers in other government agencies; this arose when scientific conclusions conflicted with short-sighted policies.

Strongly committed to environmental conservation, Johnson was in the vanguard in warning of issues that are only now receiving wide attention. Especially he emphasised the link between weed invasion and altered nutrient status in soils of naturally low fertility, the value of retaining remnants of native vegetation in rural areas, and the importance of safeguarding the detailed regional record of genetic diversity by using local provenances in plantings of native species.

It was characteristic of Johnson, in the Preface to a popular book, Flowers and Plants of New South Wales and Southern Queensland, not to be content with bland remarks but to give a strong message. The opportunity to get that message to a wider audience in a non-technical context was not to be missed:

On the local front, resist by all legal means the unnecessary fouling of gullies by residential or other development at their heads, leading to mineral enrichment and choking by weeds. Resist 'reclaiming' (a profoundly dishonest word) of swamps. Prevent building on headlands and unnecessary artificial revegetation of sand-dunes. Oppose clearing, mowing, planting of roadsides; let the native vegetation or even harmless 'weeds' grow – they will support a rich life of invertebrate animals and some birds and other vertebrates (though certain noxious weeds cannot be tolerated and harbour for rabbits must sometimes be destroyed). Keep even the smallest patches of native or semi-native vegetation – the large reserves alone are not enough. [54]

Another conservation message was primarily addressed to agriculturalists: 'Large areas of the Australian landscape derive much of their character from trees that are survivors from forests or woodlands previously existing in areas now mainly cleared. Many of these trees are already old, and grazing and cultivation are preventing natural establishment of their progeny' [36]. Here Johnson and Briggs argued that natural regeneration also preserves scientifically valuable information about the pre-existing vegetation and emphasised the importance of using locally collected seed in revegetation projects, in order to maintain local genetic provenances.

From the 1950s to the early 1970s, a period when National Parks and Wildlife Service organizations were lacking or embryonic in Australia, there were only a few ecologists with broad knowledge of the flora and vegetation. Systematists had been major champions of nature conservation and served in some roles that would now mostly fall to ecologists. Johnson was influential in this way, especially as an expert member of New South Wales Government committees that reviewed National Parks, State Parks and Reserves in 1967 and subsequently the Committee of Inquiry on Differences and Conflicts between Interests of Parks and Conservation Authorities, Scientific Bodies and Mining Companies (the 'Sim Committee'). His unpublished report on the conservation value of the Kurnell Peninsula was a precursor to the designation of that area as a National Park.(25) He chaired a committee of the New South Wales Government investigating the decline of planted Norfolk Island pines, a striking feature along many coastal beaches. Research commissioned by the committee found that the trees were suffering the effects of pollution by non-biodegradable detergents in wind-borne sea spray. Much later, Johnson provided information on eucalypt diversity to assist colleagues preparing a comprehensive report on the World Heritage values of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney; the area's outstanding diversity of eucalypts was a critical feature emphasised in the successful nomination for its inclusion on the World Heritage List.

Retrospect

Accounts of Johnson's life and achievements by Benson,(24) Hull(23) and Briggs(26) were included in an issue of the journal Telopea dedicated to him in 1996, his 71st year. A short obituary later appeared in Telopea.(27)

He was awarded the Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales (1979), and the Mueller Medal of ANZAAS (1984), elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1986), and made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to botanical science (1987), as well as holding honorary or corresponding memberships of the Linnean Society (London), the Botanical Society of America and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. Two books on very different botanical subjects(17, 28) were dedicated jointly to Johnson and Briggs and, shortly after his death, the preface to papers from a symposium on Proteaceae dedicated the volume 'to all those people who have in one way or another been influenced by Johnson ('Grandfather Proteaceae' as dubbed at the Symposium)'.(29)

Johnson left a legacy in the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, which was transformed into a much more vigorous and forward-looking organization during his directorship, with satellite gardens under active development and flourishing education programmes. He was also responsible for the greatly increased breadth and quality of its scientific programmes.

Alone or with colleagues, he distinguished and described four new families of vascular plants, 33 new genera and some 286 species (including posthumous publications), also reclassifying a further 395 others. He has been criticized for being too prompt to alter classifications, thus changing plant names, and not considering sufficiently the confusion resulting for the many non-specialist users of such names. But the insight that prompted the changes, borne of much observation and critical comparison, has mostly led other experts studying the same groups to come to agree with his decisions. Colleagues are continuing to publish work initiated jointly with him; descriptions of thirty new species of Restionaceae, in particular, are yet to be published jointly.

The spectrum of plant families in which Johnson made major clarifications and improvements to classification is remarkably broad, including Casuarinaceae, Myrtaceae, Oleaceae, Proteaceae, Restionaceae and Zamiaceae. In the eucalypts, he and his colleagues delimited evolutionary lineages and systematized available information into a framework that greatly clarified this large and complex group.

In phylogenetics, Johnson's work was done mostly just before a turning point in the subject when powerful cladistic packages and macromolecular data would become widely available. As a result, hypotheses that he developed, solely or jointly, have in some instances been robustly supported but in other cases have been negated by the new data. It is a tribute to the thoroughness of his investigations, the quality of his reasoning and the scope of the questions that he tackled that his phylogenetic hypotheses for the eucalypts, Myrtaceae, Proteaceae, Oleaceae and Myrtales were all still being quoted as starting points for investigations by new approaches many years later.(7, 12,15, 21)

Johnson has been commemorated by other botanists by the naming of the following species: Baumea johnsonii K.L. Wilson (Cyperaceae), Davidsonia johnsonii J.B. Williams & G. Harden (Cunoniaceae), Eucalyptus johnsoniana Brooker & Blaxell (Myrtaceae), Grevillea johnsonii McGill. (Proteaceae), Macrozamia johnsonii D.L. Jones & K.D. Hill (Zamiaceae), Notelaea johnsonii P.S. Green (Oleaceae), Sclerolaena johnsonii (Ising) A.J. Scott (Chenopodiaceae), Typhonium johnsonianum A. Hay & S. Taylor (Araceae) and Xanthorrhoea johnsonii A.T. Lee (Xanthorrhoeaceae).

Johnson never sought research students but worked closely with colleagues in his own institution. Several of those colleagues, especially Karen Wilson, Peter Weston, Ken Hill and I, made careers for some decades there and, as a result, his influence may not have been disseminated as widely around Australia as might have happened if there had been more movement of his colleagues. Nevertheless, his reputation in Australia and internationally was strong and his team in Sydney was productive and notable for the broad synthesis that characterized their studies. In 2001, the Editorial Committee of Australian Systematic Botany determined that the journal would publish a continuing series of invited review articles critically evaluating key areas of systematic botany in Australia. Deciding to name these to commemorate a major contributor to this field, they chose the title, the Johnson Review Series.

Johnson has been seen as unduly vehement, and was certainly demanding of high standards of logical thought, clear expression and wide knowledge. He was often a stern critic but many younger botanists, in particular, referred warmly to kindness and encouragement received from him and his generosity in sharing his knowledge. Especially he supported several botanists whose views were, he believed, being rejected primarily for their unorthodoxy rather than on evidence. A very large number of publications over several decades acknowledged his constructive comment, or discussion with him.

Peter Raven, eminent botanist and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, U.S.A., summed up Johnson's international reputation:

Our knowledge of Australian plants has been greatly improved as a result of the industrious, intelligent and forceful career of Lawrie Johnson. He has given us new insight into several of the most important groups of plants in Australia – ones that are leading components in the vegetation, and most interesting biogeographically He was never afraid to take on difficult problems in systematics, and he made important contributions to our understanding of every group that he studied. Few have or could have accomplished so much. (30)

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.13, no.4, 2001. It was written by Barbara G. Briggs, Honorary Research Associate (formerly Senior Assistant Director Scientific), Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

Numbers in brackets refer to the references, numbers in square brackets refer to the bibliography.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the constructive comments of Merle Johnson, Karen Wilson, Ken Hill, Peter Weston, Peter Wilson and Leonie Stanberg in preparing this account.

References

1. Read by a friend since schooldays, Geoffrey Swain, at the service at Northern Suburbs Crematorium, on 8 August 1997, before Johnson was buried beside the grave of his parents.
2. Gilbert, L., The Little Giant: The Life and Works of Joseph Henry Maiden (Armidale: Kardoorair Press, 2001).
3. G.J. Harden (ed.), Flora of New South Wales, vols 1-4 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993; revised editions vol.1, 2000, vol.2, 2001).
4. Pers. comm. Ken Hill, from database of Hill and Leonie Stanberg.
5. Anderson, R.H., The Trees of New South Wales, 3rd edition (Sydney: Government Printer, 1956).
6. Brooker, M.I.H. A new classification of the genus Eucalyptus L' Hér. (Myrtaceae). Austral. Syst. Bot. 13 (2000), 79-148.
7. Udovicic, F. and Ladiges, P.Y. Informativeness of nuclear and chloroplast DNA regions and the phylogeny of the eucalypts and related genera. Kew Bull. 55 (2000), 633-645; McKinnon, G. E., Steane, D.A., Potts, B.M. and Vaillancourt, R. E. Incongruence between chloroplast and species phylogenies in Eucalyptus subgenus Monocalyptus (Myrtaceae). Amer. J. Bot. 86 (1999), 1038-1046; Drinnan, A.N. and Ladiges, P.Y. Floral development in 'Symphyomyrtus group' of eucalypts (Eucalyptus: Myrtaceae). Austral. Syst. Bot. 4 (1991), 553-562.
8. Noble, I.R. Ecological traits of Eucalyptus L'Hérit. Subgenera Monocalyptus and Symphyomyrtus. Austral. J. Bot. 37 (1989), 207-224; Anekonda, T.S., Criddle, R.S., Bacca, M. and Hansen, L.D. Contrasting adaptation of two Eucalyptus subgenera is related to differences in respiratory metabolism. Funct. Ecol. 13 (1999), 675-682; but also see Adams, M.A. Contrasts between Eucalyptus subgenera. Funct. Ecol. 14 (2000), 654.
9. Ladiges, P.Y. and Udovicic, F. Comment on a new classification of the eucalypts. Austral. Syst. Bot. 13 (2000), 149-152.
10. Troll, W., Die Infloreszenzen: Typologie und Stellung im Aufbau des Vegetationskorpers, Bd.1, 2 (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1964, 1969).
11. Grimes, J. Metamerism, heterochrony, and inflorescence morphology, with special reference to the Pithecellobium-complex (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae: Ingeae). Brittonia 44 (1992), 140-159.
12. Gadek, P.A., Wilson, P.G. and Quinn, C.J. Phylogenetic reconstruction in the Myrtaceae using matK, with particular reference to the position of Psiloxylon and Heteropyxis. Austral. Syst. Bot. 9 (1996), 283-290; O'Brien, M.M., Quinn, C.J. and Wilson, P.G. Molecular systematics of the Leptospermum suballiance (Myrtaceae). Austral. J. Bot., 48 (2000), 621-628; Wilson, P.G., O'Brien, M.M., Gadek, P.A., and Quinn, C.J. Myrtaceae revisited: a reassessment of infrafamilial groups. Amer. J. Bot. (in press).
13. Barlow, B.A. Chromosome numbers in the Casuarinaceae. Austral. J. Bot. 7 (1959), 230-237; Polyploidy and apomixis in the Casuarina distyla species group. Austral. J. Bot. 7 (1959), 301-320.
14. Smith-White, S. Cytological evolution in the Australian flora. Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 24 (1959), 273-289.
15. Hoot, S.B. and Douglas, A.W. Phylogeny of Proteaceae based on atpB and atpB-rbcL intergenic spacer region sequences. Austral. Syst. Bot. 11 (1998), 301-320; Weston, P.H., Barker, N.P. and Downs, K. A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Proteaceae based on ITS nrDNA and rbcL cpDNA sequences. To be submitted to Austral. Syst. Bot. (in preparation).
16. e.g. Linder, H. P. The gynoecia of Australian Restionaceae: morphology, anatomy and systematic implications. Austral. Syst. Bot. 5 (1992), 227-245.
17. Meney, K.A. and Pate, J.S. (eds), Australian Rushes: Biology, Identification and Conservation of Restionaceae and Allied Families (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1999).
18. Cutler, D. F. Juncales. In Metcalfe, C.R.(ed.), Anatomy of the Monocotyledons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
19. Briggs, B.G., Marchant, A.D., Gilmore, S. and Porter, C.L. A molecular phylogeny of Restionaceae and allies. In Monocots – Systematics and Evolution (Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Comparative Biol. Monocots, Sydney, 1998) eds K.L. Wilson and D.A. Morrison (Melbourne: CSIRO, 2000), pp. 661-671.
20. Chase, M.W., Fay, M.F. and Savolainen, V. Higher-level classification in the angiosperms: new insights from the perspective of DNA sequence data. Taxon 49(2000), 685-704.
21. Wallander, E. and Albert, V.A. Phylogeny and classification of Oleaceae based on rps16 and trnL-F sequence data. Amer.J.Bot.87 (2000) 1827-1841.
22. Hill, K.D. Cycadophyta, Cycadaceae, Stangeriaceae, Zamiaceae. Flora of Australia 48 (1998), 597-661.
23. Hull, D.L. Rainbows in retrospect: L.A.S. Johnson's contributions to taxonomic philosophy. Telopea 6 (1996), 527-539.
24. Benson, D. L.A.S. Johnson: taxonomist, ecologist, conservationistbotanist sens. lat. Telopea 6 (1996), 521-526.
25. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. [Vegetation of Kurnell Peninsula] Notes to map. (Unpublished manuscript, 1968), in Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.
26. Briggs, B.G. L.A.S. Johnson – a botanical career. Telopea 6 (1996), 511-520.
27. Briggs, B.G. Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson, 26 June 1925 – 1 August 1997. Telopea 7 (1997), 177-180.
28. Flora of Australia 17A. Proteaceae – Grevillea (Melbourne: CSIRO, 2000).
29. Douglas, A.W. Preface to papers from international symposium on Proteaceae Melbourne 1996. Austral. J. Bot. 46 (1998), 3pp.
30. Letter, P.H. Raven to B.G. Briggs, 16 March 1998.

Bibliography

1. Garden, J. and Johnson, L.A.S. Proposals for conservation of the names of three Australian genera. Australas. Herb. News 5 (1949), 3-5.
2. Garden, J. and Johnson, L.A.S. Microstrobos, a new name for a Podocarpaceous genus. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 1 (1950), 315-321.
3. Johnson, L.A.S. A hitherto undescribed Kochia (Chenopodiaceae). Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 1 (1950), 343-345.
4. Johnson, L.A.S. Valid publication and nomina alternativa. Australas. Herb. News 7 (1950), 1-4.
5. Johnson, L.A.S. Nomenclature. Austral. J. Sci. 14 (1952), 184-186.
6. Garden, J. and Johnson, L.A.S. Additional note on the proposed conservation of the generic name Pherosphaera. Taxon 3 (1954), 150.
7. Johnson, L.A.S. Macadamia ternifolia F. Muell. and a related new species. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 79 (1954), 15-18.
8. Johnson, L.A.S. Tropical eucalypts. Australas. Herb. News 14 (1954), 7-9.
9. Johnson, L.A.S. Two new species of Persoonia. Victorian Naturalist 73 (1957), 160-161.
10. Johnson, L.A.S. A review of the family Oleaceae. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 2 (1957), 395-418.
11. Johnson, L.A.S. Nestegis (family Oleaceae). In O. Degener, Flora Hawaiiensis. (1958) (3pages).
12. Johnson, L.A.S. The families of cycads and the Zamiaceae of Australia. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales. 84 (1959), 64-117.
13. Johnson, L.A.S. Zamiaceae. Flora of New South Wales. 1 (1961), 21-41.
14. Pryor, L.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. The status and significance of the hybrid Eucalyptus marginata Sm. X E. megacarpa F. Muell. Austral. J. Bot. 10 (1962), 129-133.
15. Evans, O.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Palmae. Flora of New South Wales 21 (1962), 1-6.
16. Johnson, L.A.S. Taxonomic notes on Australian plants. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3: 93-102.
17. Johnson, L.A.S. (1962) Studies in the taxonomy of Eucalyptus. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1962), 103-126.
18. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Taxonomic and cytological notes on Acetosa and Acetosella in Australia. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1962), 165-169.
19. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. A revision of the Restio gracilis complex. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1963), 200-217.
20. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. Geographic races in Restio tetraphyllus Labill. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1963), 218-222.
21. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. Intrageneric groups and new species in Lepyrodia. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1963), 223-227.
22. Johnson, L.A.S. Cytological and taxonomic notes on Zamiaceae. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1963), 235-240.
23. Johnson, L.A.S. New species of Juncus in Australia and New Zealand. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 3 (1963), 241-244.
24. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Evolution in the Proteaceae. Austral. J. Bot. 11 (1963), 21-61.
25. Johnson, L.A.S. The fruit of Eucalyptus preissiana. A corrected interpretation. Victorian Naturalist 82 (1965), 223-224.
26. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. Restionaceae. Flora of New South Wales 25 (1966), 2-28.
27. Evans, O.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Philydraceae. Flora of New South Wales 31 (1966), 3-6.
28. Johnson, L.A.S. Casuarina monilifera L. Johnson, sp. nov. In W.M. Curtis, The Student's Flora of Tasmania, 3 (Government Printer: Hobart, 1967), pp. 651-653.
29. Pryor, L.D., Johnson, L.A.S., Whitecross, M.I. and McGillivray, D.J. The perianth and the taxonomic affinities of Eucalyptus cloëziana F. Muell. Austral. J. Bot. 15 (1967), 145-149.
30. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. The status and relationships of the Australasian species of Typha. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1968), 57-68.
31. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. New species in Eleocharis. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1968), 70-72.
32. Johnson, L.A.S. Rainbow's end: the quest for an optimal taxonomy. Presidential address. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 93 (1968), 8-45.
33. Johnson, L.A.S. Biosystematics alive? – a discussion. Taxon 19 (1970), 152-153.
34. Johnson, L.A.S. [Re-publication of] Rainbow's end: the quest for an optimal taxonomy (with addendum). Syst. Zool. 19 (1970), 203-239.
35. Pryor, L.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. A Classification of the Eucalypts (Australian National University: Canberra, 1971).
36. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Unplanted trees: the value of natural regrowth. Agric. Gaz. New South Wales 82 (1971), 34-35.
37. Johnson, L.A.S. Science and non-science in systematics. 14th Int. Congr. Entomol., Abstr. (1972), 12-13.
38. Johnson, L.A.S. New species and subspecies of Casuarina in Western Australia. Nuytsia 1 (1972), 261-265.
39. Johnson, L.A.S. and Blaxell, D.F. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus – I. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1972), 284-290.
40. Johnson, L.A.S. Evolution and classification in Eucalyptus. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 97 (1972), 11-29.
41. Johnson, L.A.S. and Cutler, D.F. Empodisma: a new genus of Australasian Restionaceae. Kew Bull. 28 (1973), 381-385.
42. Lander, N.S. and Johnson, L.A.S. A new Australian species of Maytenus. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1973), 373-376.
43. Johnson, L.A.S. and Evans, O.D. Cyperus brevifolius and an allied species in Eastern Australia. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1973), 378.
44. Johnson, L.A.S. and Blaxell, D.F. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus – II. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1973), 379-383.
45. Johnson, L.A.S. and Blaxell, D.F. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus – III. Contr. New South Wales Natl. Herb. 4 (1973), 453-456.
46. Johnson, L.A.S. New fund for research on Australian plants. Austral. Pl. 7 (1973), 171, 197.
47. Johnson, L.A.S. Recent research on the classification of Australian plants. Austral. Pl. 7 (1973), 173-174.
48. Lander, N.S. and Johnson, L.A.S. Australian species of Celastrus. Telopea 1 (1975), 33-39.
49. Johnson, L.A.S. and McGillivray, D.J. [description of] Grevillea rivularis. (In D.J. McGillivray: Australian Proteaceae: new taxa and notes.) Telopea 1 (1975), 23.
50. Briggs, B.G., Hyland, B.P.M. and Johnson, L.A.S. Sphalmium, a distinctive new genus of Proteaceae from North Queensland. Austral. J. Bot. 23 (1975), 165-172.
51. Johnson, L.A.S. Comments on article 'The challenge of urban forestry'. Architecture in Australia 64 (1975), 61-62.
52. Johnson, L.A.S. and McGillivray, D.J. Conospermum Sm. (Proteaceae) in eastern Australia. Telopea 1 (1975), 58-65.
53. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. On the Proteaceae – the evolution and classification of a southern family. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 70 (1975), 83-182.
54. Johnson, L.A.S. Preface. In Rotherham, E.R., Briggs, B.G., Blaxell, D.F. and Carolin, R.C. Flowers and Plants of New South Wales and Southern Queensland (Reed, Terry Hills, 1975), pp. 7-8.
55. Johnson, L.A.S. Problems of species and genera in Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae). Plant Syst. Evol. 125 (1976), 155-167.
56. Johnson, L.A.S. Review of Flora Europaea, vol. 4, edited by T.G. Tutin and others. Search 8 (1976), 289.
57. Johnson, L.A.S. Newcomers to Australia scrutinised. Review of P.H. Raven and T. Engelhorn Raven, The Genus Epilobium (Onagraceae) in Australia. Syst. Bot. 2 (1977), 87-88.
58. Johnson, L.A.S. A rich and unfamiliar flora. Austral. Nat. Hist. 19 (1977), 57-61.
59. Johnson, L.A.S. The plant family Proteaceae. Austral. Pl. 9 (1978), 303-311.
60. Johnson, L.A.S. Juncaceae – new species. In Flora of South Australia by J. M. Black, ed. J.P. Jessop, edition 3 (1) (1978), pp. 320-331.
61. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Evolution in the Myrtaceae – evidence from inflorescence structure. Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 102 (1979), 157-256.
62. Johnson, L.A.S. and Alford, D. Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. Austral. Parks & Recreation, (May 1979), 25-26.
63. Johnson, L.A.S. and Blaxell, D.F. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus – IV. Telopea 1 (1980), 395-397.
64. Johnson, L.A.S. Notes on Casuarinaceae. Telopea 2 (1980), 83-84.
65. Johnson, L.A.S. The scientific role of botanic gardens. Pp. 18-23 in Proc. Conf. on Development of a Botanic Gardens, Coffs Harbour Jetty (University of New England, Armidale, 1980).
66. Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Casuarinaceae, then and now. Abstr. XIII Int. Bot. Congr. (Sydney) (1981), 278.
67. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Composition and relationships of Myrtaceae. Abstr. XIII Int. Bot. Congr. (Sydney) (1981), 132.
68. Johnson, L.A.S. Eucalypts (genus Eucalyptus). In Oxford Encyclopedia of Trees of the World, ed. B. Hora (Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 214-218.
69. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Three old southern families Myrtaceae, Proteaceae and Restionaceae. In Ecological Biogeography of Australia, ed. A. Keast (The Hague:W. Junk, 1981), pp. 427-469.
70. Pryor, L.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Eucalyptus, the universal Australian. In Ecological Biogeography of Australia, ed. A. Keast (The Hague:W. Junk, 1981), pp. 501-536.
71. Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Juncaceae. In Flora of Central Australia, ed. J.P. Jessop (A.H. and A.W. Reed: Sydney, 1981), pp.425-427.
72. Johnson, L.A.S. The Leguminosae. (Review) Science 216 (1982), 1402-1403.
73. Johnson, L.A.S. Notes on Casuarinaceae II. J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 6 (1982), 73-82.
74. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Inflorescences – a further comment. Austral. Syst. Bot. Soc. Newsletter 30 (1982), 57-58.
75. Rodd, A.N. and Johnson, L.A.S. 'The Royal Botanical Garden' in Sydney. Gärtn.-Meister 2 (1982), 26-29.
76. Johnson, L.A.S. Casuarinaceae. In P. van Royen, The Alpine Flora of New Guinea 4 (1983), 2405-2408.
77. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Myrtaceae – comments on comments: Taxon 32 (1983), 103-105.
78. Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Casuarinaceae (pp. 66-77) and Juncaceae (pp. 362-364) In Flowering Plants in Australia, eds B. Morley and H. Toelken (Rigby: Adelaide, 1983).
79. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Myrtaceae (pp. 175-185); Proteaceae (pp. 238-244); Restionaceae (pp. 371-373); Flagellariaceae (pp. 375-376); Hanguanaceae (p. 376). In Flowering Plants in Australia, eds B. Morley and H. Toelken (Rigby: Adelaide, 1983).
80. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Myrtales and Myrtaceae – a phylogenetic analysis. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 71 (1984), 700-756.
81. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Alexgeorgea nitens, a new combination in Restionaceae. Telopea 2 (1985), 781-782.
82. Johnson, L.A.S. Whence, where, whither? the Royal Botanic Gardens in review. In Ann. Rep., Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney 1984-1985 (1985), pp. 10-13.
83. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. A new species and a new genus of Restionaceae from Tasmania. Telopea 2 (1986), 737-740.
84. Thompson, J. and Johnson, L.A.S. Callitris glaucophylla, Australia's 'White Cypress Pine' – a new name for an old species. Telopea 2 (1986), 731-736.
85. Harden, G.J. and Johnson, L.A.S. A note on Diploglottis australis (G. Don) Radlk. Telopea 2 (1986), 745-748.
86. Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Casuarinaceae In Flora of South Australia by J.M. Black, edn 4, part 2, eds J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken (Govt Printer: Adelaide, 1986), pp. 108–113.
87. Johnson, L.A.S. Aspects of the systematics of the eucalypts. Austral. Syst. Bot. Soc. Newsletter 53 (1987), 91-93.
88. Johnson, L.A.S. Notes on Casuarinaceae III: the new genus Ceuthostoma. Telopea 3 (1988), 133-137.
89. Wilson, K. and Johnson, L.A.S. Smilax glyciphylla. Austral. Syst. Bot. Soc. Newsletter 57 (1988), 1-3.
90. Johnson, L.A.S. Models and reality: doctrine and practicality in classification. Pl. Syst. Evol. 168 (1989), 95-108.
91. Adolphi, K., Seybold S. and Johnson, L.A.S. Proposal to conserve 8878 Brachycome Cass. (Asteraceae). Taxon 38 (1989), 511-513.
92. Wilson, K.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. Casuarinaceae: a synopsis. In "Higher" Hamamelidae. Evolution, Systematics, and Fossil History of the Hamamelidae 2, eds P.R. Crane and S. Blackmore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 167-188.
93. Wilson, K.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. Casuarinaceae. Flora of Australia 3 (1989), 100-174.
94. Briggs, B.G., Johnson, L.A.S. and Krauss, S.L. The species of Alexgeorgea, a Western Australian genus of the Restionaceae. Austral. Syst. Bot. 3 (1990), 751-758.
95. Wilson, K.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. Cycadatae. In The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, I. Pteridophytes and Gymnosperms, ed K. Kubitzki (Berlin: Springer, 1990), pp. 362-377.
96. Johnson, L.A.S. and Hill, K.D. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus and Angophora. (Myrtaceae). Telopea 4 (1990), 37-108.
97. Wilson, K.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. Casuarinaceae. In Flora of New South Wales.,vol.1, ed. G.J. Harden (NSW University Press: Sydney, 1990), pp. 507-517.
98. Johnson, L.A.S. New Australian taxa in Juncus (Juncaceae). In Aspects of Tasmanian Botany, Winifred Curtis Memorial Volume, ed. M.R. Banks (Royal Society of Tasmania: Hobart, 1991), pp. 35-46.
99. Johnson, L.A.S., and Briggs, B.G. The two Tasmanian species of Calorophus. In Aspects of Tasmanian Botany, Winifred Curtis Memorial Volume, ed. M.R. Banks (Royal Society of Tasmania: Hobart, 1991), pp. 47-51.
100. Krauss, S.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. A revision of the complex species Persoonia mollis (Proteaceae). Telopea 4 (1991), 185-199.
101. Weston, P.H. and Johnson, L.A.S. Taxonomic changes in Persoonia (Proteaceae) in New South Wales. Telopea 4 (1991), 269-306.
102. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 2. A revision of the gimlets and related species, Eucalyptus extracodical series Salubres and Annulatae (Myrtaceae). Telopea 4 (1991), 201-222.
103. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 3. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae). Telopea 4 (1991), 223-267.
104. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 4. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae). Telopea 4 (1991), 321-349.
105. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 5. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae) in Western Australia. Telopea 4 (1992), 561-634.
106. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematics and evolution of Australian Restionaceae – a changing scene. In Southern Temperate Ecosystems: Origin and Diversification, conf. abstr. (1993), p. 26.
107. Briggs, B.G, Johnson, L.A.S., Porter, C. and Krauss, S.L. Resolving polyphyletic assemblages in east Gondwanan Restionaceae. XV Int. Bot. Cong., Yokohama, Abstr. (1993), p. 235.
108. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Classification of Australian and other non-African Restionaceae. In Monocotyledons: An International Symposium, Abstracts (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, 1993), p. 23.
109. Johnson, L.A.S. New species of Juncus (Juncaceae) in eastern Australia. Telopea 5 (1993), 309-318.
110. Hall, N. and Johnson, L.A.S. The Names of Acacias of New South Wales with a Guide to Pronunciation of Botanical Names (Royal Botanic Gardens: Sydney, 1993).
111. Wilson, K.L., Johnson, L.A.S and Bankoff, P. Juncus. In Flora of New South Wales., vol.4, ed. G.J. Harden (NSW University Press: Sydney, 1993), pp. 266-289.
112. Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Casuarinaceae. In The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, II, ed K. Kubitzki (Berlin: Springer, 1993), pp. 237-242.
113. Johnson, L.A.S. and Briggs, B.G. Calorophus erostris (C.B. Clarke) L.A.S. Johnson & B.G. Briggs, comb. nov. (Restionaceae). P. 425 In Curtis, W.M. and Morris, D.I., The Student's Flora of Tasmania, part 4B (St. David's Park Publishing: Hobart, 1994).
114. Johnson, L.A.S. and Morris, D.I. Allocasuarina duncanii, a new species in Allocasuarina section Cylindropitys (Casuarinaceae). Telopea 5 (1994), 793-794.
115. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 6. A revision of the coolibahs, Eucalyptus subgenus Symphyomyrtus section Adnataria series Oliganthae subseries Microthecosae (Myrtaceae). Telopea 5 (1994), 743-771.
116. Johnson, L.A.S. The names of acacias – let's get it straight. Austral. Pl. 17 (1994), 375.
117. Weston, P.H. and Johnson, L.A.S. Three new species of Persoonia (Proteaceae) from Queensland. Telopea 6 (1994), 31-37.
118. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 7. A revision of the bloodwoods, genus Corymbia (Myrtaceae). Telopea 6 (1995), 185-504.
119. Johnson, L.A.S. Sense and Systematics. S. African J. Sci. 92 (1996), 303-308.
120. Smith, G.F. and Johnson, L.A.S. South African plant systematics: needs, priorities and actions. S. African J. Sci. 92 (1996), 314-320.
121. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Classification and southern connections in Restionaceae. Southern Temperate Biota and Ecosystems, 2nd Southern Connection Congr. Abstr. (1997), p.93.
122. Weston, P.H. and Johnson, L.A.S. Persoonia hindii (Proteaceae), a new species from the Newnes Plateau, New South Wales. Telopea 7 (1997), 199-203.
123. Williams, C.A., Harborne, J.B., Greenham, J., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Flavonoid evidence and the classification of the Anarthriaceae within the Poales. Phytochemistry 45 (1997), 1189-1196.
124. Johnson, L.A.S. Proteaceae – where are we? Austral. Syst. Bot. 11 (1998), 631-633.
125. Conti, E., Graham, S.A., Litt, A., Wilson, P.G., Briggs, B.G., Johnson, L.A.S. and Sytsma, K.J. Interfamilial relationships in Myrtales: molecular phylogeny and patterns of morphological evolution. Syst. Bot. 22 (1997), 629-647.
126. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Georgeantha hexandra, a new genus and species of Ecdeiocoleaceae (Poales) from Western Australia. Telopea 7 (1998), 307-312.
127. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. New genera and species of Australian Restionaceae (Poales). Telopea 7 (1998), 345-373.
128. Hill, K.D. and Johnson, L.A.S. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 8. A review of the Eudesmioid eucalypts, Eucalyptus subgenus Eudesmia. Telopea 7 (1998), 375-414.
129. Williams, C.A., Harborne, J.B., Greenham, J., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Flavonoid patterns and the revised classification of Australian Restionaceae. Phytochemistry: 49 (1998), 529-552.
130. Linder, H.P., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Anarthriaceae. In The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants IV, ed K. Kubitzki (Berlin: Springer, 1998), pp. 19-21.
131. Linder, H.P., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Ecdeiocoleaceae. In The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants IV, ed K. Kubitzki (Berlin: Springer, 1998), pp.195-197.
132. Linder, H.P., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Restionaceae. In The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants IV, ed K. Kubitzki (Berlin: Springer, 1998), pp. 425-445.
133. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. New combinations arising from a new classification of non-African Restionaceae. Telopea 8 (1998), 21-31.
134. Johnson, L.A.S. and Hill, K.D. Systematic studies in the eucalypts. 9. A review of series Sociales (Eucalyptus subgenus Symphyomyrtus, section Bisectaria, Myrtaceae). Telopea 8 (1999), 165-218.
135. Xia Nianhe, Johnson, L.A.S. and Wilson, K.L. Casuarinaceae. In Z.-Y. Wu and P.H. Raven (eds) Flora of China 4 (1999).
136. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. A guide to a new classification of Restionaceae and allied families. In Australian Restionaceae – Biology, Identification and Conservation, eds K.A. Meney and J.S. Pate (University of Western Australia Press: Nedlands, 1999) pp. 25-56.
137. Meney, K.A., Pate, J.S., Dixon, K.W., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Conservation of Australian Restionaceae. In Australian Restionaceae – Biology, Identification and Conservation, eds K.A. Meney and J.S. Pate (University of Western Australia Press: Nedlands, 1999) pp. 465-479.
138. Linder, H.P., Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. Restionaceae-a morphological phylogeny. In Monocots-Systematics and Evolution (Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Comparative Biol. Monocots, Sydney 1998) eds K.L. Wilson and D.A. Morrison (CSIRO: Melbourne, 2000), pp. 653-660.
139. Harborne, J.B., Williams, C.A., Briggs, B.G., and Johnson, L.A.S. Flavonoid patterns and the phylogeny of the Restionaceae. In Monocots-Systematics and Evolution (Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Comparative Biol. Monocots, Sydney 1998) eds K.L. Wilson and D.A. Morrison (CSIRO: Melbourne, 2000), pp. 672-675.
140. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S., Hopkinsiaceae and Lyginiaceae, two new families of Poales in Western Australia, with revisions of Hopkinsia and Lyginia. Telopea 8 (2000), 477-502.
141. L.A.S. Johnson and Wilson, K.L. Juncus edgariae (Juncaceae) a new species from New Zealand, Telopea 9 (2001), 399-402.
142. Briggs, B.G. and Johnson, L.A.S. The genus Desmocladus (Restionaceae) and new species from the south of Western Australia and South Australia. Telopea 9 (2001), 227-245.
143. Briggs, B.G.and Johnson, L.A.S. New species of Harperia, Loxocarya, Onychosepalum, Platychorda and Tremulina (Restionaceae) in Western Australia. Telopea 9 (2001), 247-257.
144. Hill, K.D., Johnson, L.A.S. and Blaxell, D.F. New taxa and combinations in Eucalyptus section Dumaria (Myrtaceae) Telopea 9 (2001), 259-318.
145. Wilson, K.L. and Johnson, L.A.S. The genus Juncus (Juncaceae) in Malesia and allied septate-leaved species in adjoining regions. Telopea 9 (2001), 357-397.

(Further joint publications are in preparation by Johnson's former colleagues.)

Kenneth James Le Couteur was born in St Helier, Jersey, on 16 September 1920 and died in Canberra on 18 April 2011. He had a distinguished career as a theoretical physicist in the United Kingdom and in Australia as the Foundation Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Research School of Physical Sciences of the Australian National University. He was internationally recognised for his significant contributions to the statistical model of excited nuclei and the extraction of beams from proton synchrocyclotron accelerators.

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About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 23(2), 2012. It was written by B. A. Robson, Department of Theoretical Physics, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University.

Written by Derek Denton.

Introduction

Kenneth Baillieu Myer was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy in April 1992, under the provision for special election of people who are not scientists but have rendered conspicuous service to the cause of science. Myer was a significant figure in Australian history by virtue of his contribution to the origins or early development of major national institutions, most notably the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, the School of Oriental Studies at the University of Melbourne, the Victorian Arts Centre and the National Library of Australia. He successfully fostered new research in organizations such as the Division of Plant Industry of the CSIRO and helped build the Oriental Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

A philanthropic life

One of Australia's great citizens, Kenneth Baillieu Myer, and his wife Yasuko died in a light plane crash in Alaska on 30 July 1992. Ken had been elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in April 1992 under the provision for 'special election' of people who are not scientists but who are judged to have rendered conspicuous service to the cause of science.

Kenneth Myer was an exceptional man who had a discernable impact on the arts, science and learning in Australia. This reflected his imagination and powerful impetus to create, which stemmed from a real curiosity. This generated his enthusiasm for science and an appetite to associate with and participate in the process of scientific discovery. He sought to understand the context – biological, medical or physical – of the investigations with which he identified. Although he was not formally trained in technology or biomedical science, this was no impediment to his wish to grasp the essence of a research investigation, and how it might alter basic knowledge and also have practical implications.

Kenneth Myer was rich and generous. His attitudes and philosophical outlook were not those of many, given his background and education. These circumstances were 'Establishment', with the connotation of wealth and power and the embrace of social structures that add up to a settled state of affairs. Notwithstanding this, elements of his outlook on life and society were non-conformist and, to a degree, socialist.

The customary pattern of biography in this journal centres on contributions to knowledge and the influence of discoveries. This includes the impact of the scientist in question on the academic world and community, illustrated by a comprehensive bibliography of publications. Kenneth Myer's impact was different. There are many people in Australia who have made large fortunes or built upon an inheritance, and who have departed the scene and left little behind in a public sense. Their presence and passing were unremarkable. By contrast, an account of Kenneth Myer's life illuminates how a lay person can participate in the progressive unravelling of a scientific problem, spurred on by an impatience to surmount obstacles – intellectual, organizational and financial.

This happened in several instances with Kenneth Myer and resulted in his taking the initiative. Thus in his major act of philanthropy, the creation of the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, he conceived a plan that involved both his brother, Baillieu Myer, and another highly influential figure in Australia, Sir Ian Potter. The creation of the Howard Florey Laboratories was the first major philanthropic exercise for all three, and perhaps its success set a pattern for what might benefit Australian science in the future. Recounting aspects of how they became involved may act as a paradigm in relation to future instances whereby imaginative citizens become philanthropists of science. The key element was the emergence of a sense of identification with the process of scientific discovery – the sense of being a participant in events. For Kenneth Myer, this sense of deep involvement coupled with his personal philanthropy was also operative in the case of the National Gallery and Arts Centre in Victoria, the National Library of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Division of Plant Industry of CSIRO, and the University of Melbourne.

Kenneth Baillieu Myer was born on 1 March 1921, the eldest son of a Jewish-Russian immigrant to Australia, Simcha Baevski. Simcha changed his name to Sidney Myer shortly after founding the family business. He married Marjory Merlyn Baillieu and they had four children – Kenneth, Neilma, Baillieu, and Marigold. All four children were born in the USA, where Sidney Myer had substantial business interests. In an interview with John Edwards, published in the Financial Review – one of the rare interviews Kenneth Myer gave, which provided key source material for this biography – Ken states that from 1920 until 1928, it was a toss-up whether his father would make his major interest in California or in Australia. In 1929, he decided to come back to Australia.

While in California, Kenneth Myer attended the local primary school in San Mateo, about twenty miles south of San Francisco. He did not see a great deal of his father because of the latter's preoccupation with his business, sport and travel. He had strong memories, however, of his father as a very warm and tremendously energetic man. Sidney was always doing something.

Sidney Myer started in business with a small clothing shop in Bendigo, Victoria, and progressed to Melbourne's Bourke Street in 1911, where he took competitors by storm with his unconventional marketing methods. Despite the fact that at times the enterprise was at risk, within a short time he demolished the Bourke Street site of Wright and Neil and built the Myer Emporium, which became one of Australia's largest stores. This retail empire was the foundation of the family fortune, and Sidney Myer was most generous to the community. His benefactions to music were the foundation of what is a rich musical heritage today. He was most helpful to the poor during the Depression of the 1930s. His great Christmas Dinner in 1933 for ten thousand pensioners and unemployed brought him much fame. The Premier of Victoria, Sir Stanley Argyle, was moved to comment at the time of Sidney Myer's death in 1934 that 'a transcending trait in his character was his deep humanitarianism'. Sidney Myer's philanthropy did not stop with his death, for in his will he left ten per cent of his estate of one million pounds to a trust for charitable philanthropic and educational needs in the community 'in which I made my fortune'.

Kenneth Myer was thirteen when his father died. He later stated that 'If you are the eldest male in the family at age thirteen you have a much stronger feeling of responsibility at an earlier age than is normal'. He stressed that his mother had a great influence on him in amplifying the memory and legend of his father. She had very strong principles and inculcated an attitude of community duty.

Ken had been sent to be a boarder at Geelong Grammar School, an experience that he did not enjoy. He found it an artificial society, somewhat difficult for a sensitive boy. He was shy and felt himself to be a loner. Though he worked hard, he was not a great achiever. An important influence on him at the school was William McKay, the music master, who was later to become Sir William McKay, responsible for the Queen's music at Westminster Abbey. This association generated a deep interest in music. There was also an art master who gave him a good insight into painting, and he studied the classics, Ancient Greek and Latin.

In 1939, Ken succeeded in passing the entrance examination for Modern Greats at Oxford, but when he was in New York on his way there, the Second World War broke out and the Warden of New College advised him not to proceed to Oxford. He went instead to Princeton University and had interesting experiences there. In these early days of the war, Ken encountered a somewhat hostile atmosphere in the university. Many of his fellow students regarded the war as imperialist, and Ken came under attack for trying to defend the stand that Australia and Great Britain were taking. He felt unable to deal with the isolationist outlook of the more sophisticated East Coast students, particularly the girls. One exception was a Belgian, daughter of a professor. But there were compensations. He travelled often to New York, a journey of forty-five minutes by train.

After a year at Princeton, Ken returned to Australia and joined the Royal Australian Navy, the RAN, in the anti-submarine service. He spent six years in the navy, much of the time on destroyers. He became good friends with several of his colleagues and felt that life on destroyers was very close to nature and the sea. He became a navigator, which involved long hours contemplating the cosmos, and this had some bearing on his life-long fascination with the natural world and his philosophical cast of mind. His attachment to the earth and to trees and flowers had started in his parents' garden at Cranlana, followed by frequent trips to visit his maternal grandmother in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. Some of his tours of duty as an anti-submarine officer were in Papua New Guinea, and he was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his role in an attack by HMAS Arunta on a Japanese submarine that had torpedoed a merchant ship, Malaita, outside Port Moresby. While in the navy he worked in the North Atlantic, in Greece, and in Yugoslavia supplying Marshal Tito's forces. He also received a Distinguished Service Medal for torpedoing a German submarine in the Adriatic Sea while serving as a Lieutenant in the British navy, having temporarily transferred from the RAN to the Royal Navy in mid-1943. Later he served in the occupation forces in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. This was his first exposure to Asia.

In 1947 Ken married Prudence Boyd and they subsequently had one daughter and four sons – Joanna, Michael, Philip, Martyn and Andrew. All have shared some of Kenneth Myer's interest in philanthropy, particularly in the arts and sciences, and in giving help to the disadvantaged. Prudence Boyd was a law student at the University of Melbourne when they met, and they married fifteen months later, after her graduation. John Edwards asked Ken about Prudence. He said 'she was definitely of an academic bent, and set very high standards. She was very interested in things of the mind. Not gregarious and not interested in sport. She had been a great help to him.' Prudence set very high standards for the children, and generated an intellectual attitude in the family. In 1976 Ken and Prudence were divorced, and he married Yasuko Hiraoka in 1979.

Following the war, after contemplating a life on the land, Ken entered the Myer Emporium, and was a Director from 1948 to 1985. He was Deputy Chairman and Managing Director, 1960-1966; then Chairman, 1966-1976, and a non-executive Director, 1976-1985. He was a Director of Coles-Myer, the retail-store conglomerate formed by the amalgamation of the Myer Emporium with the Coles group of companies, 1985-1989.

Kenneth Myer was a great innovator in the retail industry and won the International Retailers Award in 1970. He was a director of the National Retail Merchants Association of the USA from 1969 to 1979. During his period of leading the Myer Emporium, there was major expansion into Melbourne's big suburban shopping centres such as Chadstone and Eastland, and also the Target discount stores were set up.

In whatever capacity he was involved, whether in business or in his wide-ranging public life, Ken established warm and enduring friendships with the people with whom he came into contact, in libraries, museums and art galleries, in broadcasting, in medical and scientific research, and in many other spheres. Those friendships were built on a respect for particular skills and expertise and a recognition that people mattered.

Kenneth Myer's first community involvement when he returned from the war was as Honorary Secretary of the National Gallery Society of Victoria from 1948 to 1953. From 1958 to 1980 he was a member of the Victorian Arts Centre Building Committee, and Chairman from 1965 to 1980. When the building of the Arts Centre was complete, he became Chairman of the Victorian Arts Centre Trust from 1980 to 1989. These formal roles ratify his influence in benefiting Melbourne and the nation in the construction of the Arts Centre on the old Wirth's Circus site in St Kilda Road. The magnificent complex of the National Gallery of Victoria, the Concert Hall, and the State Theatre and Drama Theatres have altered the texture of life in Melbourne. Close by, the Australian Ballet Centre has been built, incorporating the Australian Ballet and the Australian Ballet School. Also nearby is the Victorian headquarters of the Australian Opera. Ken's enthusiasm and role in negotiating funding from the State Government was pivotal. As a private benefactor, his influence on the architecture and internal organization was evident. He gave unstinting support to the project's architect, Roy Grounds, who was charged, after a competition, with the responsibility of building the Centre. This close working relation is perhaps epitomized by an anecdote.

One Sunday morning after Ken and I had been playing tennis, we were having a drink at his house in Albany Road, Toorak, when Roy Grounds came in. I do not remember the exact date, but it was very early in the building process. With Roy was a domestic wicker clothes basket, and over this a towel. When unveiled on the lounge-room floor, the basket proved to be full of strangely shaped polystyrene blocks which Roy, on his knees, set out on the floor. Then with great enthusiasm, he stood up and said: 'this is the Victorian Arts Centre'. Ken was delighted and they began a discussion in which Grounds described how the theatres would be buried, since there were foundation problems arising from the state of the soil adjacent to the Yarra River.

An early decision that reflected Ken's and Ian Potter's commercial judgement was the decision to place a large car park under the National Gallery, in the hope that it would contribute to the finances of the Centre and also provide easy access in and out of the entire complex. That this was a fantastic advantage is evident to those who have struggled overseas in attending Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, or the Bolshoi Theatre. The only major disappointment for Ken and Roy Grounds in the execution of the complex was the inability to complete, as conceived, the major spire that was planned for the open space on top of the State Theatre complex. This was to incorporate the headquarters of the Australian Ballet and the Australian Ballet School, but Government funds, though generous, were not adequate to allow this to be built. A fine portrait of Kenneth Myer by Wes Walters is in the foyer of the State Theatre.

National Library of Australia

Having been a member of the Interim Council of the National Library of Australia in 1960 and a founding member of the statutory Council established in 1961, Myer served as Chairman of the Council from 1974 to 1982.

Myer's role in the National Library has been described warmly by John Thompson, one-time director of the Library's Australian Collection and Services. 1 The reflections within that essay, including quotations from the first Kenneth Myer Lecture, given by E. G. Whitlam, are a most valuable record of Ken's impact on that fine institution.

Thompson records that Arthur Ellis, subsequently Librarian of the University of Western Australia, remembered Ken 'chiefly because of his enthusiasm for most things and especially for those that were new and which caught his imagination', while Harrison Bryan, the Library's former Director-General, observed that as Chairman of the Council,

Myer was meticulous, hardworking and utterly exhausting. He would arrive at meetings primed by hours of discussion beforehand, with his papers scored and rescored with the coloured felt pens he used. He was completely in control at Council meetings and remorseless in eliciting all the facts of our operations. I found him an excellent chairman to work with, in that, despite his restless energy and his wholehearted commitment to the Library, he never sought to interfere in its day to day workings or to pre-empt in any other way the proper role of the Director-General.

Thompson also records that

In his role as Chairman of the National Library of Australia Council, Ken Myer worked hard to bring the institution into the computer age. While he always honoured and respected the great collecting tradition of the Library – indeed, he stated that the collections represented the heart of the institution – he had been shocked in 1968, at the time of the opening of the new building, to hear the perception of a distinguished American visitor that the National Library, though admirable in many ways, was stranded in the eighteenth century. He referred to the management of its procedures, the handling of information and the provision of services to the nation.

This view jolted Myer into the realization that the Library should embrace the new technology and the opportunities that computers offered to streamline procedures and to deliver more efficient and effective service. The interest that he took in this became the hallmark of his term as Chairman. That same interest continued in the Library long after Ken's formal association with the institution had come to an end.

Myer's other great contribution to the National Library of Australia – and to the many other institutions and causes with which he was associated – was his personal and unstinting generosity. Harrison Bryan noted that Ken Myer was the most generous of men – generous with his money, generous with his time and generous with his friendships. At the National Library, he made major donations to a General Trust Fund that was established on his initiative to give the institution and its Director-General some financial flexibility not always possible under traditional public service arrangements. In fact, two separate capital donations were provided to fund the Australian Libraries Summit in 1988 and the conference 'Towards Federation 2001: Linking Australians and their Heritage', organized by the National Library in March 1992.

An earlier instance of Ken Myer's generosity that fuelled what became a major initiative for Australian librarianship was described by Arthur Ellis, who remembered that in 1970, after he presented a paper to Council on how the Library might proceed with plans for an on-line national bibliographical system, Ken Myer provided the funds that enabled two senior members of the Library's staff to travel to the state of Washington in the USA to inspect the Washington Library Network (WLN) and to appraise its possible application to the Australian situation.

At that time, overseas travel was not always easy for personnel of institutions such as the National Library. It was characteristic of Myer that, having discerned the possible advantages for Australia of the WLN system, he should seek to save time and to cut through red tape by providing the means by which this important reconnaissance could be undertaken. The WLN system was eventually purchased by the National Library and provided the necessary software infrastructure to enable the Library to create its successful Australian Bibliographic Network. That network should be acknowledged as one of Ken Myer's many memorials.

In several reminiscences of Ken Myer that have been given in the years since his death, a common theme has been his friendliness, his qualities of personal warmth and his appreciation of people. At the National Library, the establishment of a scheme of long-service awards for staff was based on a suggestion by Ken, who was familiar with a similar scheme in the Myer group of companies. That scheme now operates in the National Library with the full support of the Council and it provides another tangible expression of the contribution Myer made to the Library's development as a major national institution.

During his early years on the National Library's Council, Ken had a close relationship with the then Chairman, Sir Peter Crisp, Chief Justice of Tasmania. After each Council meeting, they would spend the weekend trout fishing at Lake Eucumbene with friends. An early element in Ken's promoting of the transition of the Library from a traditional repository of documents to an electronic-age information centre was his association with Dr Martin Cummings of the International Office of the US National Institutes of Health in Washington. Cummings had been involved in the grant from the National Institutes of Health to me at the time the idea of building the Howard Florey Laboratories was conceived. He became Director of America's National Medical Library and was instrumental in the development of Medlars as an international data-retrieval system. Australia followed Sweden in a reciprocal arrangement with the USA that allowed full access to the database of the National Medical Library in Washington. Other elaborations of this system came later, but the development was consistent with Ken's desire that the Australian facilities should be first class. With his interest in architecture, Ken also exerted a powerful influence in the planning of the National Library's building, possibly the most elegant structure on the shores of Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin.

On Australia Day 1976, Ken Myer was in the second batch of Companions of the Order of Australia to be appointed, his service to the National Library being specifically cited. In 1989, the Australian Libraries and Information Association gave him its Redmond Barry Award, which goes to a person not employed in a library who has rendered outstanding services to the promotion of a library and to the practice of librarianship.

There is a story worth telling apropos the National Library that illustrates how Ken's enthusiasm could sometimes lead to a minor disaster. It involved a major loss of opportunity for the support of medical research. It was at the time following Australia's 1972 general election when Gough Whitlam with one other member of his party assumed government of the country for a short period before the remainder of the new Cabinet was formally installed. Earlier, Ken, Ian Potter, Colin Syme and Andrew Grimwade had presented to the then Prime Minister, William McMahon, a brief prepared by Sir Gustav Nossal and myself outlining the parlous state of support for medical research in Australia compared with not only the United States but also Canada, the Scandinavian countries, the UK, France and Germany. The brief showed that, considered as a percentage of gross domestic product, Australian research funding ranked very low. McMahon had said that he would consider doing something about it but did nothing, and his disappointment with this caused Ken to sign a public letter suggesting it was time for a change of government – a letter that caused a temporary rift in his family. Whitlam was now Prime Minister and Dr H. C. ('Nugget') Coombs was Pro-Chancellor of the Australian National University and resident in the Chancellor's apartment at University House. He invited Whitlam to dinner, together with Ken and me. The intention was unambiguous: to ask the new Prime Minister for a dramatic increase in the national funding of medical research. The circumstances, with Coombs as Whitlam's principal economic adviser and Whitlam's political indebtedness to Ken, could not have been better.

However, Ken had that day met up with a major figure in the Swedish National Library, and they had enthusiastically discussed the electronic linking of libraries all over Europe for exchange of information. They both arrived for dinner with a projector and slide show. Given that the Prime Minister had probably been up since 5 am, responsible for running the country almost single-handedly, it was not difficult to see that he was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open, notwithstanding the avalanche of enthusiasm. Ken was wonderfully unstoppable, and 'Nugget' and I looked at one another with some measure of despair. Despite the purpose of the dinner, medical research never came up and the chance of altering the national situation passed. As years went by, real improvement has occurred on a piecemeal basis, but the opportunity of persuading Gough Whitlam to make the quantum jump in relation to medical research becoming a national priority passed.

Community and urban interests

Ken Myer also took active interest in urban planning, architecture and the ambience in which a community conducts its daily affairs. He was President of the Town and Country Planning Association of Victoria, 1953-1958, a member of the founding Council of the Australian Institute of Urban Studies in 1967, and also, in 1971, a member of the Australian National Capital Planning Committee. He cared greatly for the welfare and aesthetics of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne and it was his habit to walk or picnic there whenever possible. He had a wide knowledge of botany and took delight in educating his friends about trees and flowers.

Ken's other public services include serving on the Committee of Economic Enquiry (the Vernon Committee) set up by Prime Minster Menzies in 1962, which reported to the Government in 1965. Ken described it as a deeply interesting experience. It was hard work, equivalent to a postgraduate course in Economics. He was much depressed by the failure of the Government to use the Report.

He also served on the Universities Commission (Chair, Sir Leslie Martin) from July 1962 for three years, and was very enthusiastic about its function.

There is no doubt that he got great pleasure from music. Sidney Myer, who was instrumental in founding the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, had delighted in organizing open-air concerts in the Botanical Gardens that were free to everyone. After his death, Ken, with his brother Bails, his mother, his cousin Norman and his sister Neilma brought about the construction of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in the Kings Domain. Concerts and, later, theatrical performances of ballet and opera took place there, and still do. The opening night in 1959 was a great occasion. The Bowl was given by Ken to the people of Victoria and Australia, with the Prime Minister, R. G. Menzies, accepting and the people of Melbourne attending en masse. The next night, Ken with wife and friends had a picnic dinner on the grass and listened to Mozart under the stars, together with thousands of other Melbournians. He was delighted – it worked.

The Myer Foundation

The Sidney Myer Fund reflected Sidney Myer's desire that a significant portion of his fortune should continue to bestow benefit on the community and provide a generous distribution from the Myer family. In addition, in 1958, Ken and his brother Baillieu Myer founded the Myer Foundation, of which Ken was President until his death. This formalized and augmented substantially the policy of personal donation that they had both followed. It was set up on the same institutional basis as the Rockefeller Foundation in the USA, with the object of 'the benefit of mankind'. The first two major benefactions made by the Myer Foundation were support for the building of the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, as will be described in detail below, and the establishment of a Chair and Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Melbourne. This latter far-sighted gesture reflected Ken's rapidly growing interest in Asia. His collecting proclivities in the arts from an early stage were largely centred on oriental art, no doubt influenced by the great family collection of Chinese ceramics. In 1958 he and Prudence made a visit to China, which at that time was an unusual thing to do. He was exceedingly curious to see what was happening, as the information available was limited. This was the forerunner of many subsequent visits and resulted in him being one of the most informed members of the Australian public in this area.

The Myer Foundation, together with the Sidney Myer Fund, is now a major force in the support of the arts and community projects in Australia. The existence of the Sidney Myer Fund and the settlement on the Myer Foundation with his brother, did not inhibit Ken from continuing his own personal donations to causes that attracted him. This was exemplified by donations of money and objects for the Japanese Gallery of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Director, Edmund Capon, has described this as the finest collection of Japanese art in Australia.

The Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine

His support for the building of the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology and Medicine was arguably the most significant philanthropic decision Ken made, particularly as he was a prime mover for it.

Ken's first involvement with science was his enthusiasm for the work of the Ionic Research Unit in the Department of Physiology at the University of Melbourne. This began informally when Ken and I met in 1954 on the tennis court at the home of Sir Norman Myer, then Chairman of the Myer Emporium. A close friendship developed with both him and his brother Baillieu ('Bails') Myer, and over the succeeding years we all spent considerable time together. Over three years, we discussed the way a surgical preparation in sheep had successfully reproduced the distortions of body fluid chemistry and evoked regulatory mechanisms that I had seen in a patient in the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The unique results there had been reported in Nature in 1948. 2 Our sheep parotid fistula preparation (an innovation in ruminants that derived from Pavlov's preparation in dogs) had opened up new avenues of medical enquiry into the control of body fluid composition and the organization of instinctive systems of ingestive behaviour in the brain. A major aspect of the work became the control of aldosterone secretion – the salt-retaining hormone. Ken fully understood this to be of great medical importance since disorders of salt balance were implicated in high blood pressure and dropsy of heart, liver and kidney disease.

Parenthetically, another issue needs mention. Ken and his wife Prudence both had an interest in the land (Prue's father had been Chairman of the Australian Wool Board) and both were intrigued by our hypothesis. This was that the change of sodium-to-potassium ratio of the sheep saliva with increasing body sodium deficit was a mechanism that emerged during evolution, and permitted ruminant types of animals (pastoral and wild game) to adapt to the extensive sodium-deficient regions of the planet. In effect, the animal as it became depleted of salt was using potassium, the cation abundant in grass and herbage, to replace sodium in order to operate its digestive system with the copious volumes of saliva that were required.

A crucial step in unravelling the control of aldosterone was the development of the idea of having a transplanted adrenal gland in the neck of sheep. By circulating the blood of a salt-deficient animal to this transplant, it was shown that there was an unidentified hormone in the blood that controlled aldosterone secretion. This evoked international media interest that had an impact in Australia and generated an editorial in the British Medical Journal3.

Ken Myer was enthused by these developments since he had a clear conceptual grasp of the biology and medicine involved. Apart from visits to the laboratories, he often called in at my house to hear the latest results. Several things now happened in quick succession. John Coghlan, who had joined the Unit, had found in the international literature an abstract describing a new radioisotope method for estimating adrenal steroids in adrenal-vein blood. This was of vital importance to us. Ken, when told that it involved buying a Packard liquid scintillation spectrometer costing £10,000, immediately provided the funds and supported Dr Coghlan's going to the USA to learn the methodology.

By this time Ken, his brother Bails and Sir Ian Potter, the distinguished stock broker and financier, had all visited the Department of Physiology laboratories more than once to see the sheep on which the experiment was being carried out and to discuss the growing implications of the data for medical science. Following one such visit, a dinner party was held in 1958 that was attended by Ken and Bails Myer, Sir Ian Potter, Colin Syme, who was Chairman of BHP and President of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Professor R. D. ('Pansy') Wright, Head of the Department of Physiology, Dr H. C. Coombs of the Reserve Bank, who by this stage had first-hand knowledge of the experiments, and myself. The discussion covered the paucity of provision for medical research in Australia at governmental level. During the course of the evening, Coombs remarked that the experimental work in the Department of Physiology, with its attested international success, now required a really good laboratory to follow it out. No more was said, but the next week Coombs invited Ken and Prudence Myer to spend a weekend in Canberra at the Australian National University, when he showed Ken the John Curtin School of Medical Research. This was an imposing building. Coombs's percipient planting of the seed was notable, but possibly the outcome surprised even him. On the Monday night after the weekend, Myer rang me and asked: 'How much would it cost to build an internationally first-class laboratory for long-term survival experiments on animals, such as you are working on?' The answer I gave was a quarter of a million pounds, and Myer's immediate response was: 'I know somebody who has some of that'. He named his accountant, Arnold Hancock. Ken then suggested that a dinner be held later in the week with Sir Ian Potter. This occurred on the Wednesday night, with Baillieu Myer, Professor R. D. Wright, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Sir Sydney Sunderland, and myself present. Ken proposed to Sir Ian that they undertake to raise 150,000 pounds of the funds required, and that they between them put in 100,000 pounds. Sir Ian immediately agreed to go halves, and then went further and suggested that the whole amount be underwritten by them, so that it would be possible for the scientists to go ahead and plan the building immediately. An architect, Barry Patten, was chosen by the Friday night and a site identified in the grounds of the University of Melbourne on which to build the laboratories. It fell to Professor Wright to persuade his colleagues in the Faculty, as well as the Vice-Chancellor, to let this building be constructed on what was then the women's hockey field of the University. This was situated in the south-west corner of the university campus, and anteceded the new Medical Centre that was later built there. Wright had a good ally in Sir Leslie Martin, the recently appointed first Chairman of the Australian Universities Commission, and the University agreed. Given this flying start, I made an approach to the Rockefeller Foundation whose Director of Medical Sciences, Dr Robert Morison, noted that Australia had been sitting on its hands for twenty years as far as the Foundation was concerned, and that this was a welcome new move. Within five minutes he agreed to provide 50,000 pounds. Sir Ian Potter then approached the Prime Minster, Sir Robert Menzies, who agreed that the Commonwealth would contribute 100,000 pounds. A contribution by the University made it possible for construction of the laboratories to embody fully the plan worked out by the architect and scientists. When it was constructed, the building represented possibly the finest facility in the world for long-term survival experiments on large animals. The National Institutes of Health in Washington made the same observation on its character in 2004, in the course of making a grant to the scientists then working there.

The University of Melbourne, having agreed that the proposed ten-floor laboratories would be built, suggested that the building might be named after Myer and Potter. Ken, on the other hand, proposed that it would be consonant with the whole spirit of the enterprise if it were named for a distinguished Australian who had made a major contribution to medical knowledge. Howard Florey, President of the Royal Society, was well-known personally to the scientists in the group, and in particular to Professor Wright. Myer and Potter were warm to the notion that the laboratories might be named after Florey, who was due to visit Australia to undertake experimental work in the Department of Physiology. When asked, Florey consented. At the opening ceremony on 30 August 1963, he expressed his warm appreciation in characteristic fashion. The Prime Minister dedicated the building and Florey responded by stating:

This is a red letter day because those who have generously provided the wherewithal have stood aside and allowed this splendid building to be named after me, although I have been, for so long, absent from Australia. I am very sensible of this honour. It is an honour which comes to few people, and an honour I particular appreciate receiving because it comes before I am completely dead.

He added:

The value of a laboratory such as this is that it will make discoveries, and that in the ambience of a university it has a maximum chance of stimulating the powers of enquiry of young men and women yet to come. There are always some whom a university will influence and educate to appreciate the beauty of experiments carefully planned, elegantly executed and clearly described.

Once occupied in 1962, the Howard Florey Laboratories of Experimental Physiology and Medicine progressed satisfactorily, working well with the University of Melbourne and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington. NIH support exceeded, three- to four-fold, that supplied by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council. This meant that the Laboratories were largely American-supported. Furthermore, the staffing and activity exceeded that of the Department of Physiology itself.

Future funding of the Laboratories was brought to a head in 1967 by the Bureau of the Budget in the USA, which, because of America's gold reserve situation, decided to cut back on foreign research grants. It appeared that within three months there would be no funds to support about twenty people in the Howard Florey Laboratories. Bridging finance was provided by the Myer family, Sir Ian Potter, and the Reserve Bank of Australia. It was clear that the survival of what had been established depended on developing an independent base that would allow the Laboratories to seek support on a state, national and international basis, in a way that would not have been possible within the framework of a University department.

Kenneth Myer played a major role in the developments that led to the establishment of The Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine by incorporation through an Act of the Victorian Parliament in 1971. Discussions among those who had played a major role in establishing the Laboratories focused on the principle that Sir Ian Potter epitomized with the statement: 'We don't want a university sherry party committee. We want responsibility.' This embodied the view that if those concerned were going to give major time, effort and finance, they should have formal responsibility for the future of the enterprise. The Act of Incorporation was modelled on the Constitution of Harvard College. The Trustees were defined as a self-perpetuating group who had perpetual succession, with each remaining in office until death or by compounding with their creditors or going insane or resigning. In the event of a Trustee dropping out, the other Trustees had the right to nominate a successor. This gave a continuity of responsibility and an institutional memory. The model appeared to have served Harvard well for more than 300 years. Ken was enthusiastic about this Constitution, which was somewhat novel for the Australian scene.

The Act establishing the Howard Florey Institute envisaged its having nine Originating Members, namely Kenneth Myer, Baillieu Myer, Sir Ian Potter, Dr H. C. Coombs, Sir John Phillips, Dame Hilda Stevenson, Professor R. D. Wright, Mr Evelyn de Rothschild and me. The Act also specified that the Commonwealth of Australia, through the National Health and Medical Research Council, might nominate two members to the Board. The Victorian Government and the University of Melbourne similarly were each to have two members. The Act also provided for the appointment of Members at Large of the Institute, in addition to the Originating Members, and the Board had the power to nominate three additional members of the Board from the Members at Large, who were mainly citizens who had helped in either the scientific or the material development of the Institute. With great help from Sir Ernest Coates, Director of the State Treasury, the Act was introduced into the Victorian Parliament in 1971 by the then Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, and was supported by all parties. Kenneth Myer was elected President of the Institute, and thus Chairman of the Board, and he continued in this role until his death in July 1992. I was appointed Founding Director.

Within a year of its Incorporation, the Institute was awarded an Institutional Block Grant by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council. This was the second so given, the first having been awarded to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. It enabled the Institute to invite Dr Hugh Niall and Dr Geoffrey Tregear, who ran the Peptide Laboratory of the Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard University, to return to Australia, where they initiated programmes not only on peptide sequencing and synthesis but on cloning, gene sequencing and synthesis. This led to the sequencing, cloning and synthesis of the relaxin gene in several species, including man, and made the Institute a leading centre for molecular biology. This development was fully supported by Kenneth Myer, who gave me every assistance and also provided financial help through the Myer Foundation.

The resulting body of basic biomedical knowledge underpinning aspects of clinical development is an enduring legacy of Kenneth Myer's to scientific endeavour. In his will, he made a bequest to the Howard Florey Institute that is currently worth nearly three million dollars. He was succeeded as President of the Institute by his brother Baillieu Myer and more recently by his son Martyn who became President in 2004.

The Division of Plant Industry of CSIRO

Given Kenneth Myer's fascination with botany and plants, it was natural that he should have developed an interest in the work of the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry. His enthusiasm was matched by that of Yasuko who, as an established painter of flowers on ceramics, had a deep fascination with plants. Conjointly, they were powerful advocates of the research of the Division led by Dr Jim Peacock, and they also played an important role in the commercialization of the Division's research by providing post-doctoral fellowships. One of these was directed to drought-induced genes in plants, which in turn helped to develop drought resistance in Australian crops. The genetic manipulation of plants was a paramount consideration. Ken personally supported the development of the Gene Shears Company, and also provided support for a Master of Science position in the Division's Biotechnology Program. Ken also arranged, through the Myer Foundation, for the data-basing of the specimen collection of the Division's herbarium, thereby computerizing the details of more than fifty thousand samples of Australia's plants. Just a few weeks prior to his and Yasuko's tragic death, he spoke of the privilege it had been to support the Plant Industry Fellowship Scheme. If Australia wished to add value to its agricultural and food-processing industries, he said, it must invest in more applied research projects. Jim Peacock speaks of Ken as a man with remarkable vision, but also as a warm human being with a great smile and boundless enthusiasm and energy, who inspired all who had the privilege of meeting or dealing with him.

Chairmanship of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

When Kenneth Myer was invited in 1983 to become the Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), he asked one or two of his friends whether they thought he should take it on. The response he received was affirmative and enthusiastic. His friends recognised from his National Library experience and his involvement in experimental science that he had an enormous enthusiasm for technology. He therefore could serve as a powerful advocate for the embattled national broadcasting system. A large number of people felt that Australia was well served by the ABC, and were loyal to it. The ABC's portfolio of television, Radio Australia, and the national medium wave and FM radio programmes was almost unrivalled – the only parallel was the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). This was in Kenneth Myer's mind when he accepted the invitation that, in time, had an unhappy outcome. Ken's enthusiasm was set against the fact that his circumstances of life had accustomed him to things going his way. Being chairman of the Myer Emporium for a considerable period did not help to temper that orientation.

When he first entered the ABC, he and his wife Yasuko visited the many areas of its activities. Ken was full of questions and clearly to the forefront of his mind were things the Government might be persuaded to do, to strengthen the functions of the ABC technologically. Arguably, there could not have been a better advocate for the Corporation in this regard, had other matters not overwhelmed him.

The best recounting of the problems that arose is in a book written by the then staff representative on the Board of the ABC, Tom Molomby. 4 Molomby was a barrister who had been involved with the ABC at a production level for a number of years before becoming the staff representative on the Board. He precipitated Ken's resignation from the chairmanship, and what he says gives an interesting insight into Ken Myer's character. Despite the great qualities I have attempted to bring out in this account of his life, occasionally his judgment could veer off course, and Molomby's reflections convey facets of Ken's cast of mind known to friends and family. He did not care for confrontation and was deflected from what could have been a constructive outcome for the ABC because he came into conflict with members of the Board experienced in the law and journalism. Ken defended his Chief Executive Officer, Geoffrey Whitehead, when evidence from some quarters indicated that this was not a good cause.

Molomby's book recounts differences between Board members and the Chief Executive Officer, and the fact that Ken failed to resolve the issue. Molomby, with his legal background, was strongly of the view that the Chief Executive Officer was unable to deny him as a Board member access to crucial documents that should have been available to all Board members and not just to a selected group. Ultimately he took Whitehead to court and won the case. In a debate within the Board, Ken took the view that the Board should pay the legal costs of both parties, and asserted that that had always been the understanding. Molomby denied this and stated that had such a proposal come up, he, because of his intense interest in the issue, would have remembered it. The argument became too much for Ken Myer's patience and he left the meeting amid signs of considerable emotion – he walked home, conveyed his resignation to the Government, and never returned. He left the next day for Tokyo. This occurred in April 1986.

This was an unhappy episode when viewed against Ken's creative involvement in so many other areas, but perhaps it reflected the conflicting forces in a body such as the ABC. The professional capacities underpinning the position of those involved were different from what he had encountered in other contexts, and he was unable to manage them with the same success and equanimity that had attended his involvement in other institutions. His great strength was in the creative process, with the setting up of institutions or the modifying of them in circumstances that gave him a major role, rather than in situations where strong political forces were operative. It is interesting to conjecture what might have happened, had he accepted Gough Whitlam's invitation to become Governor-General of Australia.

The light plane accident in Alaska that terminated Ken's and Yasuko's lives was a terrible tragedy for his family, his close friends, and a wide circle who admired him immensely and were captivated by his infectious grin and laugh, his wilder enthusiasms, and his extraordinary charm. A predominant element in his life was his great delight in nature and his joy in being in wild, remote places. He revelled in fly fishing, at which he was skilled, and though he seemed depressed when he failed to catch anything, it was obvious that the rushing rivers and forest more than compensated. The rivers and lakes of Australia's Snowy Mountains were the main setting, but Alaska became a great attraction. The rivers and mountains there were on a much grander scale, and the big fish in the rushing waters excited him immensely.

Ken, with his brother Baillieu and his sisters, amplified the course set by their parents in philanthropy. Succeeding generations of the Myer family have followed this path. Without doubt Ken Myer changed Australia for the better.

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol.18, no.1, 2007. It was written by Derek Denton, Department of Physiology, University of Melbourne, Australia.

References

1. Thompson, J. K. (1962). Kenneth Baillieu Myer: An Appreciation. National Library of Australia News November 1992, 7-10.
2. 2. Denton, D. A. (1948). Renal regulation of extracellular fluid. Nature 162(4120), 618.
3. Denton, D. A., Goding, J. R. & Wright, R. D. (1959). Control of adrenal secretion of electrolyte active steroids. British Medical Journal 2(5150), 447-456.
4. Molomby, T. (1991). Is There a Moderate on the Roof? (Heinemann: Melbourne.)

Written by A.L. Hales.

• Introduction
• Cambridge, 1931-1934: The travel times of seismic waves
• The Jeffreys-Bullen travel time tables
• The variation of density within the Earth and the ellipticity corrections
• The free oscillations of the Earth: Model A" and model HB1
• Standard Earth models
• The compressibility-pressure hypothesis
• The precursors to the DEF branch of PKP
• Bullen and mathematics
• General
• About this memoir

Introduction

Keith Edward Bullen was born at Auckland, New Zealand, on 29 June 1906. He attended schools in the Auckland area, completing his schooling at Auckland Grammar School in 1922; he earned recognition as a National Scholar, and was awarded the Eric Astley Prize for mathematics and science and a University Entrance Scholarship. From 1923 to 1925 he was a full-time student at Auckland University College and graduated BA in 1925, his major subjects being pure and applied mathematics. He was first in New Zealand in the final year examinations for the BA degree. In 1925 he became a master at Auckland Grammar School, but continued part-time studies at Auckland University College, being awarded the degree of MA with first class honours in mathematics at the end of 1927. In 1928 he became lecturer in mathematics at Auckland University College, but continued his studies for a BSc degree in physics at the University of New Zealand obtaining first class honours in that degree. In September 1931 he took leave from Auckland University College to study at St John's College, University of Cambridge, returning in 1934 to his post as lecturer and later senior lecturer in mathematics at Auckland University College. The work for his Cambridge PhD was completed while at Auckland. In 1940 he moved to Melbourne, Australia, as senior lecturer in mathematics. He was awarded a special MA degree by the University of Melbourne in 1945 shortly before he was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney, serving in this post until his retirement in 1971. Bullen was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Auckland in 1963 and another by the University of Sydney in 1976. After his retirement from Sydney he taught at the International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Tokyo and at the University of British Columbia.

Bullen was awarded many medals and honours by societies in Australia and abroad, being elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1949, a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1961, and pontifical academician in 1968. He was a foundation fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a member of the Council of the Academy 1955-57, and Matthew Flinders Lecturer and Medallist in 1969.

The William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union was awarded Bullen in 1961, the Arthur Day Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1963, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1974.

Cambridge, 1931-1934: The travel times of seismic waves

Bullen went to St John's College, Cambridge in 1931, and as was customary at that time he began to read for the mathematical tripos. However, Bullen saw little chance of being able to stay at Cambridge for more than two years, nor of being able to return to Cambridge after he had gone back to New Zealand. He was, therefore, anxious to make a start in research while at Cambridge. After a month or two he became a research student, with Harold Jeffreys as his supervisor. Jeffreys was working on the revision of the travel time of the seismic waves from earthquakes and Bullen worked with Jeffreys on this project throughout his years in Cambridge.

At that time the standard travel times used for the determination of the time of origin and of the location of the foci of earthquakes were those of Zoeppritz as modified by H.H. Turner. It was known that there were errors in these tables of as much as 20 seconds. The improvement of travel times is necessarily an iterative process for the earthquake is located using a set of travel times, the residuals from that set of travel times are then used to determine a second set of travel times; the earthquake is then relocated using the second set of travel times, and so on. Iterations of this kind are tedious and time consuming and were especially so in the days of mechanical calculators. It was on tasks such as these that Bullen spent his years in Cambridge. Jeffreys remarks of this period that 'Bullen's energy was phenomenal'.

Bullen's first paper with Jeffreys was a Nature letter on the subject of the corrections to the travel times of P (compressional) waves from earthquakes. It was followed by two papers dealing with the method of calculation of distance in seismology.

The Earth is an oblate spheroid, the polar and equatorial radii being 6356 and 6378 km respectively. In calculating the distance travelled by earthquake waves from a source to the observing station it is necessary to allow for the ellipticity of the Earth. It can be shown that the distance is more accurately determined if the positions of the source and the station are expressed in terms of geocentric latitude (the angle subtended at the centre of the Earth) rather than geographic latitude. This also facilitates model calculations which are carried out for the sphere of volume equal to that of the spheroid. This sphere has a radius of 6371.2 km. Travel time tables too are calculated for this sphere. T'he travel times on the spheroid differ from those on the sphere because of two other effects, the first due to the difference in the lengths of the ray path for the sphere and spheroid and the second because of the ellipticity of the surfaces of equal velocity within the spheroid. The use of geocentric instead of geographic latitudes results in differences in P travel times of the order of a few seconds and the two ellipticity effects mentioned to about 1 second. Both effects are therefore relatively minor. However in calculating the ellipticity corrections it was necessary to determine the variation of density with radius. It was in calculating the density distribution in the Earth as a step towards evaluating the relatively minor ellipticity correction that Bullen made the discovery which established his reputation and became, as he himself said in the preface to The Earth's Density, 'a developing story which has fascinated the author over much of his working life'. I will discuss the ellipticity correction and Bullen's papers on the density distribution within the Earth later in the article.

The Jeffreys-Bullen travel time tables

Bullen returned to New Zealand about the end of 1934, but the collaboration with Jeffreys in the preparation of travel time tables continued until the Jeffreys-Bullen tables were published in 1940. Bullen also published separately an account of the work on the travel times of the phases which had been reflected at the surface of the Earth.

The J-B travel time tables have stood the test of time remarkably well. Beginning about 1960 careful studies in which some systematic effects, for example regional variations in the travel times, have been eliminated have shown that the errors in the travel times from 30° to 100° arc distance are less than about 3 sec. Even now some of the systematic differences have not been satisfactorily determined and explained. At distances between 0° and 20° the observed times in continental shield or platform regions differ from the J-B times as much as 6 seconds. However, it is not yet possible to estimate with certainty how much correction to the J-B tables is required for the average Earth in the distance range 0° to 20°.

The variation of density within the Earth and the ellipticity corrections

Jeffreys showed that the calculation of the ellipticity correction to the travel times of seismic waves involved a term dependent on the ellipticities of the internal strata of equal density (and of course velocity). Adams & Williamson had shown that if any region of the Earth were chemically homogeneous and the seismic velocities V_p and V_s, were known it was possible to calculate the variation of density within that region from the equation

where G is the gravitational constant, M the mass inside the sphere of radius

k being the incompressibility and r the density at radius r. It was pointed out by Birch that equation 1 applied only if the temperature were adiabatic, but the correction required for any conceivable excess of the actual temperature gradient over the adiabatic is very small.

Bullen's procedure was therefore to calculate the mass and the moment of inertia of the crust, then, assuming an initial value for r at the base of the crust of 3.32 gms/cm³ corresponding to dunite, to integrate equation 1 numerically to the mantle-core boundary at a depth of 2900 km. The masses and moments of inertia of the crust and mantle were then subtracted from the known mass and moment of inertia of the Earth to obtain M_c and I_c, the mass and moment of inertia of the core. He found that

where R_c is the radius of the core. This required that the density of the core was greater at the core-mantle boundary than at the centre of the Earth. He remarked that this was 'out of the question both on general grounds and also in view of the strong evidence of lack of rigidity of the central core'. After examining the possible sources of error he concluded that the mantle could not be chemically homogeneous all the way from the crust to the core. In view of seismological evidence for the probable existence of a velocity discontinuity at 400 km he calculated the value of the density at a depth of 400 km required to reduce the constant 0.57 in equation 2 to less than 0.40, the value which applies in the case of a sphere of uniform density. After some further manipulation the density distribution given in column 2 of Table 1 was found. It is interesting to note that this first model of the density variation within the Earth was calculated using Gutenberg's 1929 velocities. This model was the progenitor of the model A series of models, but was never given an identification, nor used by Bullen thereafter.

Once the densities had been calculated it was possible to calculate the variation of g, and of pressure with depth and also the ellipticities of the strata of equal density. It was also possible to determine the variation of the incompressibility and rigidity or shear modulus as a function of depth within the Earth.

Bullen states explicitly that in the 1936 and 1937 papers, 'the hypothesis of a first order discontinuity in density corresponding to the 20° discontinuity was used'. In the 1936 paper he remarks 'the discontinuity being assumed to occur at about 350 km'. In a later paper Bullen stated that the density increase at the discontinuity was 10 percent.

By 1940 Bullen had developed the lettered zonation of the Earth which was the basis of most of his subsequent work on the density variation within the Earth. In the 1940 paper they were as follows:

Layer A: The crust, thickness 33 km
Layer B: Upper mantle, 33-413 km depth
Layer C: Upper mantle transition zone, 413-984 km depth
Layer D: Lower mantle, 984-2400 km depth

In the 1940 paper Bullen followed Jeffreys in regarding the 20° discontinuity as a second order discontinuity, i.e. as a change in the rate of change of velocity with depth rather than the step increase of the 1936 and 1937 papers. The density change was spread throughout region C, hence the name transition zone. In the 1940 paper the density was tabulated down to the core-mantle boundary. It was followed by a paper in which densities were calculated for the core, now split into outer and inner cores and layers E, F and G. The outer boundary radii of layers E, F and G were 3471, 1398, and 1250 km respectively. In the 1942 paper Bullen recognized the uncertainties in the density distribution in the core. Accordingly, he considered two hypotheses:

1. that the density varied smoothly throughout the inner and outer core, the density at the centre of the Earth being 12.3, and
2. that there was a substantial increase in density between the inner and outer cores, the density at the centre of the Earth being 22.3.

Quite clearly Bullen regarded these as extreme cases, and in 1942 he tabulated the mean density distribution for the two hypotheses. The individual distributions corresponding to hypotheses (i) and (ii) were first tabulated explicitly in 1947. The 1942 core densities are given in Table 1 as are the density distributions corresponding to the hypotheses (i) and (ii). Bullen remarks, 'The model corresponding to hypothesis (i) has been called model A´; and a model midway between hypotheses (i) and (ii), model A.'

Bullen's work on the density distribution within the Earth established him as one of the leading geophysicists of his era and led during the 1950s to his wielding considerable influence in international geophysics.

The free oscillations of the Earth: Model A" and model HB1

In the early 1960s two developments occurred which bore on the density distribution within the Earth and led to Bullen returning to the development of density models for the Earth, the major focus of his early research. One of the constraints on the density distribution within the Earth is the moment of inertia. For many years the accepted value of the moment of inertia, I, was 0.3335Ma², M being the mass and a the radius of the Earth. Early analyses of the orbits of artificial satellites showed that a significant revision of this relation was required and by 1963 it was clear that I was 0.3308Ma². It then became necessary to revise the earlier determinations of density.

The second development was that following the great Chilean earthquake of May 22 1960, it was established that free oscillations of the Earth with periods as long as 54 minutes could be observed. The importance of this development was that previously the observational data constraining models of the elastic constants and density within the Earth were, apart from the mass and movement of inertia, the velocities of seismic body waves determined from the travel times of seismic waves. These velocities V_p and V_s, are related to the elastic constants k, incompressibility and m, shear modulus, and the density, r, by the equations:

There are thus two equations for three unknowns. In constructing density models as Bullen had done in the 1930s and 1940s it was necessary to make use of the additional constraint imposed by the use of the Adams-Williamson equation, and assume a value for the density at the top of the mantle selected on the basis of models of the chemical composition of the mantle. The calculated periods of the free oscillations of the Earth depend on the same three quantities, k, r, m, as the velocities V_p and V_s, but not in the same way. The dependence on the three parameters varies with the mode of the free oscillation. Thus a powerful new procedure for testing earth models was available.

Early comparisons for the calculated and observed free periods showed that minor modifications of the density distributions were necessary. It was suggested by MacDonald & Ness that the shear velocity in the lower mantle should be changed, but this modification was not consistent with the observed travel times of S waves. Landisman, Sato & Nafe suggested instead a modification to the density in the lower half of the mantle. This modification was characterized by a super-adiabatic temperature gradient in that region. This was regarded as physically improbable, and Dorman, Ewing & Alsop suggested that the radius of the core should be increased from the Jeffreys value of 3473 km to 3488 km.

Bullen and his graduate student of that period, Ray Haddon, embarked on a lengthy analysis of the models which were in accord with the free oscillation data. The first stage in that analysis was the construction of model A", a modification of model A´ to be consistent with the satellite-derived value of the moment of inertia, 0.3308Ma². Bullen & Haddon confirmed that if the core radius were increased by 15-20 km the requirement of a super-adiabatic temperature gradient in the lower mantle could be avoided. In a series of papers they developed model HB1. This model fitted the data available in 1967, but not the additional data which became available in the early 1970s. It is quite similar to the model A´ or the first of Bullen's density models in the 1936 paper.

Bullen and Haddon's procedure in developing model HB1 was based on successive approximation. They began with model A" and by trial and error modified the model until the data available were fitted. Bullen remarks that 'an advantage of well-conducted successive approximation over some other procedures is that, broadly speaking, new parameters are introduced into model representations only where statistically demanded by the observational evidence' and that 'the user of successive approximation can always be in close touch with the fine details contributing to the improvements being made.' Other procedures used in the inversion of the observational data were the Monte Carlo procedure and generalized inversion procedures. Bullen thought that Monte Carlo models were 'biased against simplicity' and that a user of Monte Carlo procedures was out of touch with important details of the process because the acceptance or rejection of models was carried out inside a computer.

Generalized inversion procedures do not produce unique models, but for some purposes it is an advantage to have single models corresponding to particular sets of data. Thus generalized inversion procedures have frequently been applied using some additional criteria such as the 'credibility' criterion of Backus and some 'smoothness' requirement. In general the models developed in this way are close to the starting model for the inversion. Almost all starting models derive from, and are close to, Bullen's A models, and thus Bullen's density contributions still dominate our views of the density distribution within the Earth. It is not clear to me, and I am sure Bullen would agree, that the bounds of the acceptable density distributions within the Earth have been explored adequately.

Bullen himself continued to believe that 'successive approximation is likely to be indispensable towards securing the most reliable models, but with [generalized inversion theory] playing an increasing auxiliary role'.

The development of the Bullen density distributions is summarized in Table 1. It is remarkable how similar are the 1936 and HB1 models. In fact even the most recent of the models obtained by inversion of the free oscillation data do not differ very significantly from Bullen's 1936 model.

Standard Earth models

In 1971 the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics created a Standard Earth Committee to develop a standard Earth model and appointed Bullen as chairman. Bullen attached great importance to this development and devoted a chapter of The Earth's Density to a discussion of optimum and standard Earth models. Bullen recognized that ultimately a three-dimensional model would be necessary, but he saw the development of a spherically symmetric model in which p, apart from the effect of ellipticity, was a function of r alone, as the immediate goal. He commented that 'many Earth models are being produced which are at best, minor variants of others'. He was frustrated, and in a degree exasperated, because the committee did not make much progress towards the acceptance of a standard model. He remarked:

The task of the committee has proved to be more complex than had been anticipated, partly for the reason that prima donnas performing simultaneously on different keys are slow to produce harmony, partly because of widespread failure to appreciate the difference between a standard and an optimum model.

If he had lived to 1979 he would have been even more disappointed to know that the committee has not yet completed its labours. It is possible, but by no means certain, that finality will be achieved at the meetings of the committee at the General Assembly of the Union in Australia in December 1979.

The compressibility-pressure hypothesis

In 1946 Bullen pointed out in a letter to Nature that the incompressibility k was 6.5 x 10¹² dynes/cm² just above the mantle core boundary and 6.2 x 10¹² dynes/cm¹² just below. He remarked, 'The suggestion therefore arises that at the very high pressures obtaining in the Earth's deep interior...the compressibility of a substance may be largely independent of its particular chemical constitution.' A number of inferences based on this hypothesis were made, notably that it would follow 'with a high degree of probability that the inner part of the central core below a depth of 5000 km beneath the Earth's outer surface, is solid'. He pointed out that if this were so it might be possible to identify S waves through the inner core and introduced the notation PKJKP for these phases. So far PKJKP waves have not been identified with certainty. However, analysis of free oscillation data has confirmed this suggestion of Bullen's.

In the letter to Nature, Bullen used the phrase 'largely independent of'. Later he wrote 'essentially independent of' and developed a model based upon the hypothesis that k and its derivative dk/dp 'may in the actual Earth change continuously across the core boundary'. This was the basis for the model known as model B, the density for which is given in Table 1.

The hypothesis requires that there should be an abnormally large density gradient in the lowest 200 km of the Earth's mantle (Layer D") and in the Earth's inner core so that these two regions would not be chemically homogeneous.

From 1949 Bullen wrote a number of papers dealing with the constitution of the terrestrial planets. Both Ramsey and Bullen proposed, independently of each other and on different grounds, that the lower mantle material undergoes a phase transformation to a higher density metallic phase of the same chemical composition at the mantle-core boundary. Ramsey's case for this hypothesis rested on solid-state physics arguments whereas Bullen based his support on the fact that using model B it was possible to fit the observed facts not only for the Earth, but also for the other terrestrial planets.

For many years Bullen's research was concerned very much with questions related to the density distributions in the Earth and other planets, and the inferences which could be made if the compressibility pressure hypothesis were valid. These subjects are discussed at length in his book The Earth's Density published in 1975. He was sensitive to the emphasis in this book on his own contributions to the subject and sought to disarm criticism of the book on this score in the preface, writing:

Perhaps I should apologize also for making considerable reference to my own work. I have done this because: first, in a subject rather difficult to expound in all its intricacies, I felt I could contrive the best coherence by basing many of the developments on my own approaches, at least in the first approximations; secondly, I would like this book to help correct numerous recent distortions of detail in my past writings (a phenomenon which of course by no means afflicts only myself in this era of scientist population explosion); thirdly, since the book may be my last major effort on the subject, I have sought to make the account of my work as unambiguous as possible. I hope these reasons will help to counter any suggestion that I regard my contributions are more significant than they really are.

The book will probably be found rather more cautious in its attitude to uncertainties than are many current writings. There is a strong tendency for modern writers (including some notable contributors) in the Earth sciences to be unduly black and white in their pronouncements – rather over-ready to 'prove' and 'disprove' and to declare the 'beliefs' and misbeliefs' of themselves and others in contexts where cautious assessments in terms of probability would be wiser. (This tendency is not confined to the Earth sciences.) Here, I have striven to avoid words such as 'proof', 'true', 'false', 'right', 'wrong', 'valid', 'invalid' except in formal deductive arguments. In inductive arguments, I have sought to 'infer', not 'deduce'; I have been at pains to distinguish between 'mathematical models' and 'facts', not only with density distributions and the like, but also with (so-called) physical 'laws', and so on. Perhaps vainly, I cherish the hope that my pattern of writing may make a modest contribution towards improving the appreciation of some points of scientific inference that need to be specially heeded in geophysics.

The paragraphs quoted reflect Bullen's attitude and philosophy remarkably well. He showed that he was aware of other points of view, he would examine them, he would on occasion modify his own point of view but only if the evidence for so doing was very strong (for example, by 1968 he had recognized that Birch's Murnaghan finite strain theory implied lesser differences in incompressibility as the pressure increased, and he no longer used the compressibility-pressure hypothesis in the narrow sense of the 1949 paper; until this stage was reached he pursued his own concept vigorously).

Bullen's early work on the density distribution within the planets was centred on his compressibility-pressure hypothesis. However, beginning in 1973 he wrote a series of papers which modified a hypothesis of Sorotkin that the Earth's outer core consisted of Fe₂O. In Bullen's modification the smaller planets have cores consisting of Fe alone, the intermediate planets outer cores of Fe₂O and inner cores of Fe, while the largest planets have cores of Fe₂O alone. This hypothesis is of interest because quite recently Ringwood has suggested Fe₂O as a possible constituent of the core, though not, as in Bullen's hypothesis, the major constituent.

The section in The Earth's Density dealing with this topic provides another good example of Bullen's philosophy. After discussing models of Mars and Venus based on the Fe₂O hypothesis Bullen wrote:

Observational evidence on the seismic velocity distributions in Mars may be forthcoming before too long, and, as with Venus, would assist very much in discriminating between various ideas on the internal structure. It seems desirable to await well-based evidence of this type rather than clutter up the literature with excessive complex speculation. The legions of speculative papers on properties of the Moon, later shown to be quite futile by evidence from artificial satellite observations, provide a salutary illustration.

(Also pertinent is a recent geochemical scramble to produce papers about the Moon's deep interior using data from early samples of materials gathered at the surface. Perhaps it is not too great an exaggeration to liken the scramble to aspiring to infer the Earth's internal structure by digging up one's backyard and performing chemical experiments on the diggings.)

The precursors to the DEF branch of PKP

In 1954 there was a series of nuclear explosions at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. Father Burke-Gaffney of Riverview Observatory near Sydney noted that there were pulse-like arrivals on the Riverview records at times which might correspond to the arrival times of the seismic waves from the Bikini explosions. Together he and Bullen explored this possibility. In their first paper they noted that the arrivals from the four blasts were separated by whole numbers of minutes. They argued that this was unlikely unless the shots had been fired at some well defined time, for example, the beginning of the minute. They then showed that using an approximate location based on information in a Gutenberg paper about a 1946 explosion the P travel times at Riverview and other stations which had reported P arrivals in their bulletins were within a second or two of the J-B travel times.

They noted another fact about the bulletin readings for these explosions. At three stations, Pretoria, Kimberley, and Tamanrasset, the PKP readings were all significantly early with respect to the DEF branch in Jeffreys notation (or PKIKP, the phase which had traversed the inner core). Bullen wrote to me and asked me whether the South African records had been misread. Clearly this was not the case. The early arrivals were real and there was a larger amplitude second arrival at about the time expected for PKIKP. Burke-Gaffney & Bullen interpreted these early arrivals as diffractions from the caustic on the BC branch at 142 degrees. Bolt, a student of Bullen at the time of the Burke-Gaffney & Bullen papers, pursued the question of the precursors for some years thereafter. Bolt concluded that the precursor observations could be explained by two successive jumps in velocity in the outer core between 100 and 200 km above the inner core. Other authors proposed even more complex models of the velocity distribution in the lowest 500 km of the outer core as is shown in Figure 12.1 of The Earth's Density. These complex models have been abandoned. The early precursors to PKIKP, first noted by Burke-Gaffney and Bullen, are now interpreted in terms of scattering at the core-mantle boundary, an explanation first suggested by Ray Haddon.

The Bikini explosions occurred while Bullen was president of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior. He was greatly impressed by the potential of these large explosions for seismology and in 1955 wrote to the president of the Royal Society of London, and to the Academies of Science in Washington and Moscow proposing 'that for seismological and other experimental purposes one or more atom bombs be exploded during the International Geophysical Year'. He also devoted part of his presidential address to the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior in 1957 to a plea that information on explosions should be announced timeously so that they could be used for scientific purposes. This plea had an immediate effect for before the meeting ended Bullen received a telegram from the chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission announcing a forthcoming explosion.

Bullen and mathematics

Although his early leaning had been towards pure mathematics it was not long before mathematics had become to Bullen a tool rather than an end. He described himself once 'As an applied mathematician whose work leads him to put context first and mathematics second (but of course a very close second)...' and he remarked upon another occasion:

I think that most of us have met the type of mathematician who is so dazzled by the beauty of his mathematics that he applies it blindly to all and sundry without adequate analysis of the premises on which he bases his deductions, the type whose mind has been made over-rigid by pure mathematics! An important feature of applied mathematics is that it tends to correct this type of mind and, when well taught, to focus needed attention on the problem of initial premises.

Although he gave an address at the inaugural meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society he never became a member of the society and confessed that he had some doubts whether 'it was wise to link applied mathematics with pure mathematics in this middle twentieth century'. However he did regard good training in basic mathematics as essential for the training of applied mathematicians, scientists, and engineers and devoted a good deal of his time to promoting the need for good teachers of mathematics and good training mathematics programmes in schools. As always with Bullen he made his point of view crystal clear. There should be no easy options in mathematics in schools. For a time too, he was Chief Examiner in mathematics for New South Wales. This was no small task to undertake while running a large department and actively engaged in research.

General

Bullen wrote prolifically. There are 290 papers in his list of publications. The topics are diverse: apart from the many research papers there are scientific biographies, articles in encyclopedias and dictionaries of science, and articles on education, especially mathematical education.

His first book, Introduction to the Theory of Seismology, was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1947 and has been a standard text for seismology ever since. The third edition was published in 1975 and Turkish, Chinese, and Russian translations were published in 1960, 1965, and 1965 respectively. Two other books closely related to his teaching at Sydney, Introduction to the Theory of Dynamics and Introduction to the Theory of Mechanics were published in 1948 and 1949. An eighth edition of the latter was published in 1971. His short monograph, Seismology, was published by Methuen in 1954. The International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering published his notes for a lecture course on theoretical seismology in 1972. His last book, The Earth's Density, was published in 1975; it covers a wider range of geophysics than its title would suggest because the problem of the Earth's density distribution is so intimately related to seismological information on the interior of the Earth. Surprisingly perhaps there is only one reference to the revolution in the Earth sciences over the past twenty years as a result of which continental drift is generally accepted, and this reference is a casual one in a brief paragraph about the expanding Earth hypothesis.

In spite of the handicap of deafness Bullen played a very considerable role in international geophysics. He served as president of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior, as vice-president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, and as vice-president of the International Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research, and on a number of committees concerned with seismology and geophysics.

He was a very effective member of committees being always well informed on the papers and quietly persistent in discussion. In these activities I sometimes thought that he turned his deafness to advantage for, especially when in the chair, he appeared not to hear remarks which would have diverted discussion to what were, in his view, side issues.

In Australian geophysics too he played a significant role, serving for five years as chairman of the Australian National Committee for the International Geophysical Year and also for five years as chairman of the Australian National Committee for Antarctic Research.

At Sydney he taught courses in all the years of the undergraduate programme. In all his teaching he laid special emphasis on the importance of scientific method and the estimation of the reliability of data by statistical methods. Bullen regarded his role in Sydney as one of training students in all branches of applied mathematics rather than the development of a geophysics school. In his twenty-five years at Sydney he had only two PhD students in geophysics. To some extent this was because he thought it was to the advantage of students to go abroad for specialized training after completing their undergraduate degrees. Many of the students who majored in applied mathematics at Sydney did in fact do so.

Bullen's energy was, as Jeffreys remarked, phenomenal. This was true not only of his vocation, science, but also of his avocations. He was indefatigable as a tourist in his earlier days and later as a coin collector. After long days at scientific meetings, or on committees, he would spend many hours seeking out coin shops or other coin collectors.

He was always kind and courteous at meetings and ever willing to talk to the scientists, young and old, who wished to take advantage of his wide knowledge of seismology and scientific method.

Bullen married Florence Mary Pressley (known as Mary) in Auckland in 1935 and they had two children, John born in Auckland in 1936, and Anne born in Melbourne in 1943.

About this memoir

This memoir was originally published in Records of the Australian Academy of Science, vol.4, no.2, 1979. It was written by A.L. Hales, Director of the Bernard Price Institute, Geophysical Research University, Witwatersrand (1954-1962); Head, Geoscience Division, Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (later the University of Texas, Dallas) (1962-1973); and Director, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University (1973-1978). Elected to the Academy in 1976.