Robert (Bob) Crompton was a towering figure in low energy electron and ion physics in Australia and internationally, as witnessed by his seminal publications on swarm physics, atomic and molecular physics and gaseous electronics generally, his widely-read monograph with Sir Leonard Huxley on the subject of charged-particle transport, and the many personal and professional accolades and awards he received

Warning: This article discusses blood collecting in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It also contains the image of an unnamed Aboriginal man who may be deceased. It is not without justification that the collecting of blood for genetic analysis is frequently associated with race science, but it is not solely or inevitably so. This history of Robert Kirk, a British–Australian population

In this paper we examine the changes in the diversity of astronomers working in Australia, particularly the ratio of women compared to men, from 1966, when the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA) was formed, to 2023. This was a pivotal time, as there was a significant change to workplace law that enabled women who worked for Commonwealth departments to retain their permanent position once they

Dr Ferdinand von Sommer (~1800–49) was the first government geologist appointed in Western Australia, a state that today owes its prosperity largely to the discovery and development of its rich mineral deposits. During his relatively short life, Ferdinand left a trail of incredible and diverse achievements, exploits and mystery that extended across the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania

The American, Roger Tory Peterson, has been the single most influential figure in the evolution of birding field guides around the world. He was also a major contributor to the awakening of an environmental consciousness among the wider public in the second half of the twentieth century. In Australia, he provided a powerful impetus to the renovation of the field guide genre from the 1960s onward; and

Australian astronomy has undergone huge changes since the middle of the twentieth century, when astronomers generally only had access to the observing facilities of their own institution. In this paper, we look at the changes in the context of the membership of the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA), since its formation in 1966. Initially, the dominant institutions were the Australian National

Acclimatisation has been a profoundly important force in Australia’s history, yet scholars have routinely ignored or denigrated it, leaving it under-studied and misunderstood. Most accounts frame acclimatisation as a fad, briefly flourishing around the 1860s; scholars typically blame the spread of animal pests such as the rabbit for the sudden loss of interest in this branch of science. This article

As a geographically isolated and island continent, Australia has historically been protected from the impact of many damaging plant pests found overseas. However, the advent of modern transport systems and greater global trade in live plants, seed and plant products is increasing the movement of pests including invertebrates, pathogens, and weeds. Exclusion of these threats through an effective biosecurity

When myxoma virus was first released in Australia it was seen not only as a means of controlling rabbits but also an opportunity to understand the evolution of a disease in a new host. The virus quickly attenuated into less virulent variants while simultaneously rabbits built heritable resistance to the disease. Nonetheless, rather than rabbits quickly outstripping virus virulence, myxoma viruses have

David Cooper was an internationally renowned immunologist and HIV clinician who spearheaded Australia’s world-leading HIV response. Known for advocacy and community engagement, he made several world-first discoveries on HIV pathogenesis and treatment. He was involved in the development of every HIV drug used in Australia and drove the introduction of antiretroviral pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in

Dr Angus McEwan FAA FTSE who died on 5 September 2018, aged 81, was a renowned Australian fluid dynamicist, specialising in designing and conducting experimental studies in geophysical fluid dynamics, and providing outstanding leadership of national and international research programs in oceanography and meteorology.

Peter Pringsheim, best known as professor of physics at the University of Berlin, has an unusual connection with Australia. His attendance at the 1914 conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was held in Melbourne, coincided with the outbreak of World War 1, and he was interned as an enemy alien at the Trial Bay Internment Camp in New South Wales from October 1914

William Roderick (Bill) Blevin graduated from the University of New England (UNE) with First Class Honours in science in 1950, completed a Diploma of Education in 1951 and a Master of Science degree in 1952. He joined the CSIRO Division of Physics in 1953 as a research scientist and became the leader of the Optical Radiometry and Pyrometry Group. In 1972, he was awarded a DSc from the University of

Jeremy Pickett-Heaps was a biologist whose acute observational powers were fed by a deep fascination for how cells work; he had an affinity for the myriad diversity of algae and other protists in general and for what they could teach us about all cells. An early adopter of the electron microscope, he made fundamental discoveries in plant cell division and green algal phylogeny that developed into studies

Stuart Ross Taylor, born and raised in New Zealand, spent most of his career at the Australian National University where his laboratory research focused on trace element geochemistry. He made fundamental contributions toward understanding the composition and evolution of the Moon and Earth, the origin of tektites and solar system evolution. He carried out the first-ever chemical analyses of Apollo

Gretna Weste was a remarkable plant pathologist born to Australian parents in the United Kingdom (UK) during World War 1. She studied at the University of Melbourne and was employed in the Forests Commission of Victoria as a ‘temporary typist’ while investigating the preservation of timber logs burnt in the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. Weste returned to the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne

Gavin Brown was a distinguished mathematician, born and educated in Scotland. He moved to Australia in 1975 and was a key contributor to the area of harmonic analysis at the University of New South Wales. Gavin’s career saw him become vice-chancellor of both the University of Adelaide and the University of Sydney, before he became the founding president of the Royal Institution of Australia. When Brown

As the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) approaches its thirty-fifth year of operations, we outline the Australian Government’s approach to address extraordinary natural and human mediated biosecurity challenges across our sparsely populated northern shores. NAQS is a concept that is unique worldwide but could be equally well applied in many other island nations dealing with similar circumstances

John Atherton Young (1936–2004) graduated in medicine at the University of Queensland and undertook research in physiology at the Kanematsu Institute in Sydney for which he was awarded his PhD. After postdoctoral studies in Germany, he joined the department of physiology at the University of Sydney, rising to professor, then Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and finally Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Health

Professor Anthony (Tony) George Klein AM, FAA (1935–2021) was an outstanding physicist, university teacher, leader, mentor and science communicator. We recount Tony’s life from his childhood in wartime Romania, his early interest in mathematics, the family’s migration to Australia via Israel in 1953, high school and university education in Melbourne, appointment as a research scientist at the AAEC

Of all the plant diseases that occur in Australia, banana bunchy top disease would rank high on any list of those that have had the greatest impact on society. Bunchy top first became a major problem in Australia during World War 1 in the Tweed Valley in New South Wales, close to the border of Queensland. The Soldier Settlement Scheme was initiated to provide a livelihood for returned soldiers, and

Late Blight, also called Irish blight and brown rot, devastated potato crops in Ireland and countries in Europe in the 1840s, and led to famines, deaths, and the emigration of tens of thousands of poor farmworkers. The outbreaks were blamed on many factors, but finally it was demonstrated that the causal agent was an oomycete (water mould) Phytophthora infestans. The Queensland Government Entomologist

Rupert Jethro Best (1903–91), working alone at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide between 1934 and 1937, was among the first to purify tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and to propose that it was a complex macromolecule containing protein and another reactive group that was responsible for infectivity of the virus. However, his research was completely overshadowed by that of Wendell Stanley

A chance discovery early in 1980 led to a body of work on a virus and a rare species that lasted until the end of the decade. The discovery and characterisation of turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV-Cd) infecting one-fifth of the fragmented population of Cardamine robusta at Mt Kosciuszko, New South Wales, revealed a puzzle that remains unresolved. There is no clear explanation as to why there is a population

In the early decades of British settlement at Sydney Cove in 1788, the struggling colonials tried their hand at growing edible bananas but invariably failed. However, they grew extremely well in the Moreton Bay colony (Brisbane) and over time banana growing became an important agricultural industry there, particularly after the introduction of the Cavendish variety. All was progressing well until a

George Percy Darnell-Smith (1868–1942) was the second plant pathologist appointed to the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. Although he founded the Microbiology Branch (later Plant Pathology Branch) and wrote articles on many plant diseases, his noteworthy contribution was developing the ‘dry pickle’ treatment for common bunt of wheat during the 1910s. Darnell-Smith built on the knowledge gained

Ray Martin (1926–2020) was a talented and successful academic and leader, who won numerous awards and made discoveries that changed fundamental knowledge of the sub-discipline of physical inorganic chemistry. His journey over more than 90 years is one that demonstrates that he was one of nature’s gentlemen, who enjoyed sports, arts and people. He was passionate about science and discovery, and through

Acacia (the wattles) is the largest genus of plants in Australia and its species occupy almost every habitat in the country. Hard galls on the branches, phyllodes and flower parts of wattle trees were noticed from the very early days of British colonisation, but their causes were unknown. Some insects were believed to be involved, but they were not the only cause of wattle galls. In 1889, the Italian

Within a few years of the establishment of the convict settlement at Sydney Cove, the potato became one of the staple crops of the population due to its relatively high yield and the prior experience of the convicts and free settlers with growing the crop. In 1894, Henry Tryon described a new disease in southern Queensland that caused rapid wilting of plants, a ring of slightly translucent tissue just

As the number of livestock increased in the years following English colonisation of Australia in 1788, the need for nutritious fodder, including lucerne (Medicago sativa), grew. One of the first diseases found on lucerne was a leaf spot which was collected in 1879 by George Bancroft, a physician and naturalist, in a suburb of Brisbane. The Queensland Government Botanist Frederick Manson Bailey sent

The earliest record of pineapple plants being grown around Sydney in the British colony of New South Wales was that of Governor King in 1803. However, the climate of a new northern settlement at Moreton Bay (later Brisbane) soon proved to be far more conducive to growing the fruit. Pineapples prospered for over 50 years around Brisbane until a mysterious disease appeared in the late 1890s. In April

Sugarcane is one of Australia’s major agricultural industries, with approximately 95% of the crop being grown in Queensland and the remainder in northern New South Wales. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, cane growers in northern New South Wales started to see a new disease that resulted not only in the death of plants but also in difficulties in the extraction of sugar. Theories about

Grain production in the early years of the British colonisation of Australia was characterised by a lack of expertise of farmers, a paucity of farm animals and equipment and the poor work ethics of convicts. In 1803, just when wheat production was increasing and becoming less risky, stem rust of wheat caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici was discovered by an exiled Irish rebel Joseph

Professor William (Bill) Budd was a founding figure in Australian glaciology, and the first glaciology program leader of the Australian Antarctic Division (Fig. 1). Bill worked on an enormous range of glaciological and meteorological problems covering numerical modelling of ice sheets and glaciers, including surging glaciers; ice mechanics; ice crystallography; ice core paleoclimatic studies; relationships

An Adelaide-born pharmacist, Oswald B. Lower, is a neglected figure in the pantheon of early Australian amateur entomologists. Specialising in Lepidoptera, he worked mainly around Adelaide and Broken Hill where he discovered hundreds of new species, especially in the semi-arid zone of southern Australia. Lower named almost 1000 valid new species between 1892 and 1923 based upon his own material and

The discovery of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) was an important finding in Australian science, involving a self-educated field naturalist and a small team of plant pathologists who had to work in relative academic isolation and with inadequate glasshouse facilities. After its discovery in Melbourne in 1915, TSWV rapidly spread throughout Australia and by 1929, it posed an existential threat to the

Millennia of evolutionary ecology have seen Australia become one of the driest and flattest continents on Earth—and in the process, home to more than 700 species of Eucalyptus. Colonial scientists named them using a binomial system, thereby overwriting local vernaculars that had persisted for tens of thousands of years. This paper traces the man commemorated in the Albany Blackbutt, Eucalyptus staeri

Facing a choice between postgraduate study and the world of work, Roy Woodall took the advice of his research supervisor at the University of California, Berkeley, to return to Australia and find ore deposits. He spent almost all his working life with Western Mining Corporation where, from 1967 to 2001, he was successively Chief Geologist, Exploration Manager, and Director of Exploration. From humble

George Rogers (1927–2021) was elected to Fellowship of the Academy in 1977 for his outstanding contributions to our knowledge of the molecular structure of keratins and the biochemistry of keratinisation. He was a pioneer in the application of electron microscopy to hair and wool ultrastructure and to that of the hair follicle. He discovered citrulline in keratin proteins, and the enzymes, roles, and

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, CSIRO’s role broadened toward national mission-oriented research, less directly focused on supporting Australian industry. In terms of its legislated mandate, it deliberately placed increased emphasis on ‘contributing to the achievement of national objectives’ and less emphasis on ‘assisting Australian industry’. This change was accompanied by an organisational

Guy Kendall White graduated from the University of Sydney, obtaining a BSc (Hons) (1st class) in 1945 and an MSc in 1947. He attended the University of Oxford and obtained a DPhil, studying low-temperature physics in the Clarendon Laboratory. He had a productive research career as a condensed matter experimental physicist, focusing on transport and thermophysical properties of solids at low temperatures

In the first 27 years of the Central Australian Laboratory (CAL), to 1980, research focussed almost entirely on the needs of the pastoral industry. By the 1980s, ongoing campaigns for Aboriginal land rights and demands to conserve biodiversity plainly showed that there were other land uses deserving research attention. Initially CAL’s research agenda expanded to include conservation in spinifex grasslands

CSIRO’s research in the arid zone was initiated after World War 2 when a strong push to develop the sparsely populated and isolated region of northern Australia was promoted as being in the national interest. This impetus had social and political origins but implementation depended on scientific insights into regional ‘potential’, which was couched at the time in terms of agronomic and pastoral use

On the 100-year anniversary of the Australian Coral Reef Society (ACRS), previously known as the Great Barrier Reef Committee (GBRC), we provide an overview of ACRS activities throughout its history, with a detailed account of key milestones in the last 40 years. We outline how the ACRS as promoted the protection and conservation of reefs, through expert advice, reviews, and submissions to enquiries

This article summarises the careers of ten women who have made an amazing contribution to our knowledge of Australian coral reefs and their management, and how this contribution has been used by the Great Barrier Reef Committee (subsequently the Australian Coral Reef Society) to conserve and manage our reefs—an ongoing process in the face of climate change.

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider (1891–1990), a refugee immigrant to Australia in 1938, was a student of Nobel Prize-winning physicists, Einstein, Planck, and von Laue. She combined a background in physics, especially relativity theory, with a philosophical focus on the nature and possibilities of knowledge. As well as working at the University of Sydney to teach science students how to recognise philosophical

Scales and spring balances have been part of the equipment of polar expeditions since the explorations of the nineteenth century, but precision beam balances have also been included, specifically, those made by the London instrument firm of L. Oertling. In this paper, the reasons for taking such delicate instruments into such adverse conditions are discussed, as well as some of the logistical and practical

Ross Henry Day was an Australian experimental psychologist well known for his research on visual illusions and for his critical role in the establishment of experimental psychology in Australia. This role began with his creation of Australia’s first department of experimental psychology at Monash University in 1965. He also played a leading role in the formation of the Australian Psychological Society

The post-war era of the 1940s is known for the birth of global governance, a time when Western nations united in efforts to reconstruct the war-torn world and reflected on the role of science in society. History and philosophy of science (HPS) was one of the early projects that emerged out of the war years. Diana (Ding) Dyason who headed the first HPS department in the southern hemisphere is honoured

Geoffrey Burnstock was a biomedical scientist who gained renown for his discovery that adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP) functions as an extracellular signalling molecule. Born in London and educated at King’s and University Colleges, he did postdoctoral work at Mill Hill and Oxford. He moved in 1959 to the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne because he sensed there a greater freedom

By the late 1880s, the existence of alkyl derivatives of metals such as zinc and mercury was well established but diethyl magnesium had been poorly characterised and obtaining proof of its existence was a reasonable aim for chemists. Professor David Orme Masson and his student, Norman Wilsmore, at the university in the British colonial capital, Melbourne, accepted the challenge despite their distance

Hans Freeman was born in Germany and arrived in Australia with his parents in 1938. A brilliant student at the University of Sydney, he spent a seminal year at the California Institute of Technology before joining the staff at Sydney and initiating research on bioinorganic chemistry, studying metal ion complexes of compounds of biological significance such as amino acids, peptides and proteins. In

An Australian Bird Book by J. A. Leach, published in 1911, was the first field guide to Australia’s avifauna. Unlike today’s field guides, it was not tightly focussed on identification, instead devoting more than half its words to an expansive dissertation on the natural history of birds. This article scrutinises and contextualises Leach’s Bird Book to illuminate some of the interconnections between

In the middle of the last century, pharmacologists at the University of Melbourne led by Professor Frank Shaw inadvertently discovered that an amino-acridine they were using in other experiments reversed the respiratory depressive effects of morphine. They widened their search for such activity, experimenting with a range of heterocyclic substances and achieving success with a thiazole derivative,

Professor A. David Buckingham CBE FRS FAA made fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to the understanding of optical, electric and magnetic properties of molecules. Born in Australia, he was an undergraduate at the University of Sydney and took his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. He moved to Oxford in 1955 and then in 1965 became Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University

Mervyn Paterson exploited a background in metallurgical engineering and the physics of metals as the basis for a long and influential career in earth sciences, mainly at the Australian National University. Recognising the need for specialized equipment for experimental rock deformation, Mervyn made a highly distinctive contribution through his design and construction of a series of machines of progressively

In 1743, Georg Rumphius described a tree from the island of Seram in Herbarium Amboinense as Arbor Versicolor (now known as Eucalyptus deglupta Blume). Thus, the first European name for a species in the iconic Australian genus of Eucalyptus was coined decades before the British collected specimens in Australia, and before it was given its current name by a French botanist in 1789. The English translation

Scott Sloan (1954–2019) was a leader of academic engineering in Australia and beyond, as evidenced by his numerous professional accolades and important research achievements, which have had significant impact on his chosen profession of geotechnical engineering. Educated in Australia and the United Kingdom, he returned to Australia in 1984 and developed a large and active research group at the University

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 post-doctoral 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

Between 1912 and 1914, the Anglo-American popularizer of astronomy, Mary Proctor, undertook a tour of Australia and New Zealand in order to promote a solar observatory project that would ultimately be realized as the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia. Proctor came at the request of Walter Geoffrey Duffield, who would go on to be the first Director of the Mt Stromlo Observatory and who saw the