discontents

Political fallout

The atomic bomb is deployed more often as a symbol than a weapon. No discussion of the ‘dangers’ of science is complete without it. But the accompanying stereotype of scientists blinkered to the consequences of their work is hardly accurate. Even before the destruction of Hiroshima, there have been scientists prepared to enter the political fray to ensure that the technology was adequately controlled. Continue reading »

Life in ancient corals

Dorothy Hill’s fascination for corals was sparked not by the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef, but by a visit to the small Queensland town of Mundubbera, about 160 km inland. There, in the late 1920s, the young Australian geologist discovered a rich deposit of fossil corals from the Palaeozoic era. It was the beginning of a distinguished scientific career that established Dorothy Hill as a world authority on fossil corals, and one of Australia’s foremost geologists. Continue reading »

From beetles to a Nobel Prize

Early this century in the Victorian country town of Terang, the young son of a local bank manager was often seen wandering alone through the countryside, on the look-out for beetles to add to his collection. One of his treasured possessions was a book on Australian insects, in which he carefully recorded his own observations and sketches. Today that book is preserved at the University of Melbourne along with a large collection of notes, papers and photographs that tell the story of one of Australia’s greatest scientists, Macfarlane Burnet. Continue reading »

A passion for physics

Funnily, much of what we call ‘big science’ is concerned with observing very small entities. Large, expensive machines are built to harness the unimaginable forces necessary to open the sub-atomic world to scrutiny.

In this fascinating, perhaps frightening, area of research, one Australian woman found an outlet for her curiosity, and made an important contribution to nuclear physics. Joan Freeman was born in Perth in 1918. When she was four, her family moved to Sydney where Joan was educated at the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School and the University of Sydney. Throughout her childhood she was interested in finding out how things worked, often roping in her friends to help her perform simple scientific experiments. However, it was the news, in 1932, that Cockroft and Walton had succeeded in ‘splitting the atom’ that particularly inspired her to consider a career in scientific research. Continue reading »

Communicating with Wild Life

We hear a lot about science communication these days. More and more, scientists are attempting to convey something of the fascination and wonder of their work to a general audience. But imagine for a moment a radio program, devoted solely to natural science, a radio program that ran for twenty years on commercial stations from 1938-1958. A quirk? An oddity? Imagine now that this radio programme reached more than 70% of the listening audience. Impossible? No — this was the achievement of pioneering science broadcaster Crosbie Morrison. Continue reading »