Research School of Earth Sciences Newsletter Unearthed In this issue Coral Reef Fieldtrip 2 An undergraduate perspective Java Volcanoes 4 Richard Arculus writes it is 130 years since Krakatau exploded Profile 6 Emeritus Professor Mervyn Paterson celebrates 60 years at ANU ANU COLLEGE OF PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES Issue 3 | Winter 2013 Alumni Success 9 International awards recognizing some stellar careers Gift to Earth Sciences 11 Hales family donate artwork to School This newsletter is published twice a year and is archived at rses.anu.edu.au/newsletter Editing: Ian Jackson and Mary Anne King Contact Mary Anne King to submit content. Top: Kawah Ijen Bottom: View from Papandayan Photos by Professor Richard Arculus
Transcript
Research School of Earth Sciences NewsletterUnearthed
In this issueCoral Reef Fieldtrip 2An undergraduate perspective
Java Volcanoes 4Richard Arculus writes it is 130 years since Krakatau exploded
Profile 6Emeritus Professor Mervyn Paterson celebrates 60 years at ANU
A N U C O L L E G E O F P H Y S I C A L A N D M A T H E M A T I C A L S C I E N C E S
Issue 3 | Winter 2013
Alumni Success 9 International awards recognizing some stellar careers
Gift to Earth Sciences 11Hales family donate artwork to School
This newsletter is published twice a year and is archived at rses.anu.edu.au/newsletter
Editing: Ian Jackson and Mary Anne King
Contact Mary Anne King to submit content.
Top: Kawah Ijen Bottom: View from Papandayan Photos by Professor Richard Arculus
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C O R A L R E E F F I E L D S T U D Y
From the DirectorRSES turns 40! The 40th anniversary, on 1 July 2013, of the founding of the Research School of Earth Sciences was marked by an enjoyable morning tea in the School’s Jaeger Room. We were delighted to celebrate this occasion with Denise Hales, the widow of Foundation Director (1973-1978), Professor Anton Hales.
Under Anton’s astute leadership, the School began to grow from the nucleus that was the pre-existing Department of Geophysics and Geochemistry of the Research School
of Physical Sciences – initially through appointments in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Environmental Geochemistry and Ore Genesis.
This significant milestone will be celebrated with more pomp and ceremony at a late-afternoon event for the whole School community – past and present –involving speeches followed by a reception on Thursday October 17. Please save the date!
Ian Jackson
Director
During January 2013, I attended the annual Coral Reef Field Studies excursion to One Tree Island along with 22 other students from the Australian National University. The island, located in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, is approximately 80km from the Australian coast and is one of the southern-most islands of the Great Barrier Reef. As such, it is relatively unaltered by humans and is a scientist’s dream due to the pris-tine reef and the explosion of flora and fauna that call it home.
We spent 6 nights on the island, learning about coral reefs and carbonate chemistry, mapping the reef and undertaking individual research projects under the guidance of
Dr. Bradley Opdyke and Dr. Stephen Eggins. A jumble of geologists, chemists and biologists, we studied topics ranging from fish and invertebrate ecology; micro-atoll and lagoon water chemistry; coral carbonate chemistry and sedimentation. It was an incredibly valuable experience, the perfect marriage of a practical and educational field course to an idyllic tropical escape. We had the most incredible time, in the most wonder-ful place, learning the most fascinating things and I can safely say it was one of the best weeks of my life and something I will cherish for years to come.
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John Foster celebrates 50 years at ANU
Staff and students gathered to hear stories about John who originally came to ANU to work and later study for a PhD in analytical chemistry. John has spent much of his time working on the SHRIMP - a lifetime project. After fifty years, he still enjoys the challenges that new machines present.
At the moment he is looking at sulphur and oxygen isotopes, for all sorts of reasons – some to do with sea temperature change at different depths and climate change – so it’s really interesting.
Milka Strmota retiresAfter more than ten years of service to the school, our stalwart cleaner, Milka Strmota was farewelled by staff and students on Friday, 14 June. Director, Ian Jackson, thanked Milka for her dedication and commitment to the community.
We wish her a long and enjoyable retirement.
National Rock Garden
ANU recently became an education partner with the Geological Society of Australia in the National Rock Garden (NRG). Vice Chancellor, Prof Ian Young said “The NRG is a great way to communicate to the public about Australia’s geological heritage.” Chair of the NRG, Prof Brad Pillans believes the Gardens will be both an international tourist destination as well as a world
class educational place.
New School ManagerGeoff Pearson comes to ANU in his second appointment as a School Manager. His previous appointments over twenty years were in the private secondary education sector in Melbourne and Sydney. He has studied Literature and Mathematics, is a registered psychologist and has completed a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
Brief News
Students from University of Tokyo enjoy a visit
Earlier this year we hosted a visit from RSES alumnus, Prof Yusuke Yokoyama (1999 PhD) and 27 of his graduate and undergraduate students from University of Tokyo.
The students heard talks from Rainer Grün who spoke about new archaeological techniques, analysing ancient fish otoliths (ear bones) and his Lake Mungo research; Kurt Lambeck spoke on solving questions of stress and deformation of the earth's crust and the processes of changing sea levels; and Trevor Ireland spoke on our "links with the stars", solar nebula grains and the search for isotopic anomalies in solar dust.
The visitors also spent the weekend at the ANU’s Kioloa campus on the NSW south coast, where Prof Patrick De Deckker led a field trip on the local geology.
Professor Patrick De Deckker with the visiting group on the south coast.
School Manager, Mr Geoff Pearson
John and Trevor at the special morning tea
Milka with her gifts
Vice Chancellor, Prof Ian Young with Prof Brad Pillans at the MoU signing
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Research Highlights
JAVA VOLCANOESThis August, it will be 130 years since Krakatau Volcano exploded in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java. It was one of the single largest explosions in recorded history, resulting in emission of about 20km3 of ash, formation of a ~4km wide caldera, and extremely damaging tsunamis around the Strait.
Krakatau was one of a number of Javanese volcanoes visited by Richard Arculus, Dick Henley, and Hugh O’Neill in April 2013. A new, highly active volcanic vent (Anak Krakatau) has grown in the Caldera, likely commencing the cycle of edifice construction and collapse once more. The explosive character of “island arc”-type volcanoes is a consequence of high contents of dissolved gases: water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. These gases are ultimately recycled from downgoing subducted plates, in the Javanese case, the Australian-Indian Plate.
The team from RSES were interested in the variety of magma types erupted along the length of Java, particularly
as some are noted to be abnormally low in dissolved gases. For example Galunggung Volcano, which last erupted in 1982, located to the southeast of Bandung, seems to erupt comparatively dry magmas. But the finer points of this distinctive geochemistry would have been lost on the passengers and crew of a British Airways 747 which flew into the eruption column; all four engines failed and the crew were both skilled and fortunate in recovering from the crisis and being able to make an emergency landing at Jakarta.
Together with John Mavrogenes, the team is also exploring the capacity of volcanic gas emitted from cooling magmas to transport base (e.g., Cu, Zn, Pb) and precious (Au, Ag, and platinum group) metals. Interactions of rising volcanic gas with near surface ground water can be complex and dramatic. One of the classic locations where this type of activity is taking place is in the hyperacidic crater lake of Kawah Ijen (shown on the cover photograph). Native sulfur is condensed from volcanic gas on the shores of the lake, and exploited primarily for gunpowder manufacture by an extraordinarily hardy group of local miners.
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The centre of the Earth is out of sync with the rest of the mantle, frequently speeding up and slowing down.
Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić and his team (Mallory Young, Thomas Bodin, Silvie Ngo and Prof. Malcolm Sambridge) used 7 newly discovered and 17 old earthquake doublets to measure the rotation speed of Earth’s inner core over the last 50 years.
They discovered that not only did the inner core rotate at a different rate to the mantle – the layer between the core and the crust that makes up most of the planet’s interior – but its rotation speed was variable.
“This is the first experimental evidence that the inner core has rotated at a variety of different speeds,” Tkalčić said.
“We found that, compared with the mantle, the inner core was rotating more quickly in the 1970s and 1990s, but slowed down in the 80s. The most dramatic acceleration has possibly occurred in the last few years, although further tests are needed to confirm that observation.”
“Interestingly, Edmund Halley, namesake of Halley’s Comet, speculated that the
inner shells of the Earth rotate with a different speed back in 1692.”
Scientists have so far assumed the rotation rate of the inner core to be constant because they lacked adequate mathematical methods for interpreting the data. A new method using Bayesian transdimensional inference applied to earthquake doublets – pairs of almost identical earthquakes that can occur a couple of weeks to 30 or 40 years apart – has provided the solution.
“It’s stunning to see that even 10, 20 or 30 years apart, these earthquakes look so similar. But each pair differs very slightly, and that difference corresponds to the inner core. We have been able to use that small difference to reconstruct a history of how the inner core has rotated over the last 50 years. According to our model, the inner core exhibits an average differential rotation rate of 0.25–0.48 degrees per year and decadal fluctuations of the order of 1 degree per year around the mean,” he said.
The decadal fluctuations explain discrepancies between previous inner core rotation models and are in concordance with recent geodynamical
simulations. These results could help us understand the gravitational connection between the inner core and mantle and the role of the inner core in creating the magnetic field that allowed life to evolve on Earth by acting as a shield from cosmic radiation.
“What we have developed is a very powerful way to understand the internal structure and dynamics of our planet,” Tkalčić said.
Read the paper in Nature Geoscience
Research Highlights
Fossil fish sport world’s oldest six packsA team of palaeontologists, including three from ANU, have uncovered the oldest fossilised vertebrate muscles ever discovered.
The team have mapped the musculature of an ancient fossil fish approximately 380 million years old, discovered in the Gogo Formation in the
Kimberley of Western Australia.
“Gogo fossil fish are famous for their exceptional preservation,” explains Dr Gavin Young of the Research School of Earth Sciences.
“They have already revealed soft tissues such as nerve and muscle cells, the oldest known vertebrate embryos, and even a preserved umbilical cord. These are all remarkable discoveries because soft tissues had never been known to preserve in such ancient fossils."
The new study has gone beyond merely identifying soft tissues, and, for the first time, the musculature of these ancient fishes has been observed and mapped out.
Read more.
P L A N E T ’ S I N T E R N A L R O T A T I O N
Illustration by Rhys Hawkins, National Computational Infrastructure Facility.
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Profiles
W H Y S Q U E E Z E R O C K S ? M E R V Y N P A T E R S O N C E L E B R A T E S 6 0 Y E A R S A T A N U
“Why squeeze rocks? Why indeed! The response of the pure scientist might be similar to that of Mt. Everest climbers: Because they are there to squeeze. But I suppose most of us would come up with more mundane motives, among which may be included bread and butter and a variety of rationalizations. On one hand, motives may arise primarily from a materials science interest, an interest
in the properties and behavior of rocks as a particular type of material. On the other hand, they may arise primarily from a geological or geophysical interest, in which case the aim is mainly to gain knowledge of rock behavior that helps in understanding phenomena in the Earth.” [Professor Mervyn Paterson, Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 2011].
A life changing opportunitySixty-three years ago, Mervyn Paterson commenced a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Chicago, a journey that would have a lasting effect on the course of his life and career. It was 1950 and onboard a piston-engined, DC-6 aircraft it would take him several days to reach America. “It was the first time I’d flown. The DC-6 held about thirty people and everybody had a bed. We first flew to Fiji and had a marvelous buffet meal on the ground. The Fijians kept our glasses topped up so we were in a fit state to fly again. Then we took off and all went to bed,” recalls Mervyn.
“Our next stop was Honolulu. It was quite something to arrive by air in Honolulu at that time. There were girls putting leis around our necks as we came off the plane.” Mervyn would then take a further two flights, to San Francisco and Vancouver, ride the Canadian Pacific through the Rockies, before eventually arriving in Chicago.
In his first week at the University of Chicago, Mervyn also met his wife, Katalin. “I arrived on the 1st of July and met her on the 7th,” he recollects with detail. “The International House had a reception for new residents and I went along. I was button-holed by one of the girl hostesses and that was her! We had a very pleasant time there, then we went to the Friday evening frolic for a bit of a dance. The next day I ran into her in the foyer of International
House and we had coffee. The day after we went swimming in the lake - I was hooked.”
Hungarian born, Katalin had done her undergraduate degree in German Literature, Aesthetics and Art History in Budapest. She studied Social Work in Transylvania but has no records because the school was bombed during the later part of World War II. She was in Budapest during the siege at the end of 1944 with the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, and the citizens living in their cellars. “It was a horrendous time,” remarks Mervyn.
Determined to fulfill her career aspirations, Katalin received a fellowship to study Social Work in Paris after the war in 1946. “The Hungarian government said she couldn’t go, wouldn’t give her an exit visa, so she went anyway. She hired a courier to smuggle her across the border – she was a very strong minded girl!” He chuckles.
Coincidently, Mervyn had also passed through Paris that same year, but it wasn’t until Katalin was working on her Masters degree in Social Work at the University of Chicago that they first met. In 1952, Mervyn and Katalin were married in Adelaide.
Mervyn’s early careerHaving grown up on a farm 300 Kilometers North of Adelaide, Mervyn was in Australia when the war broke out. At the remarkably young age of eighteen, he had already completed his degree but was now also of military age. “I was called up and medically examined,” he recalls. “But I was very lucky because as an Engineering student, making cartridge shells and that sort of thing, I was in a reserved occupation and wasn’t allowed to go in the army.”
After working on the physics of metal fatigue at the CSIR Division of Aeronautics (now the CSIRO) in Melbourne for several years, Mervyn was offered an Angus Engineering Scholarship and a CSIR Studentship to undertake his PhD on the x-ray diffraction effects of deformation in metals at Cambridge University. “Cambridge was a real opening for me. I was so young when I did my undergraduate degree that I didn’t really live a University life until I got to Cambridge.Degree portrait at the University of
And that was a great experience for me. I loved Cambridge,” he says.
Upon returning to Australia, Mervyn continued his work at CSIR until his Postdoctoral position at Chicago ensued.
Arriving at ANUThis year marks the 60th anniversary of Mervyn’s scientific career at the ANU. His illustrious research history with the University began in 1953, when eminent Professor John Jaeger offered Mervyn a Senior Research Fellowship Position in Geophysics. Three years later he was appointed to Readership in the School of Physical Sciences and later, in the Research School of Earth Sciences.
Starting out as a metallurgist, his appointment to the University represented a dramatic change in direction for his research career, with Mervyn commencing work on the experimental deformation of rocks rather than metal. He explains, “This involved getting into high pressure experiments which was a new venture for me. Metals are ductile but rocks are rather brittle, yet if you deform rocks under conditions of high pressure, they can become ductile.”
This presented a slight hurdle by Mervyn’s estimations – when he started at the ANU, there was no laboratory equipment, so in order to conduct experiments at high temperature and pressure, he had to make his own. His ensuing endeavour would have profound effects, not only in advancing the field of rock mechanics but also on the lives and careers of many Earth Science students to follow. True to the innovative spirit that continues to resonate among academics in RSES today, Mervyn built and developed the ‘HPT’ (High pressure and temperature machine). Designed specifically for studying the mechanical properties of rocks at high temperature and pressure, the prototype is still being used downstairs in the RSES building. However, when asked if he still uses his machine, Mervyn replies, “Not now – I wouldn’t trust myself!”
When Mervyn retired he started his own scientific equipment company – Paterson Instruments. “I realised that this machine that I had developed downstairs was probably useful to other researchers and students because there was no such apparatus available commercially,” he says. Mervyn commenced manufacturing the HPT machines and later the
manufacture was taken over by Australian Scientific Instruments. Altogether thirteen were sold to several countries around the world, to Europe, North America and China.
With the money raised from selling the HPT machines Mervyn and Katalin generously set up an endowment to support an annual fellowship for PhD students in RSES. Having played such an important role in their own lives, it seems only fitting that their fellowships provide students with the opportunity to travel overseas and attend a major international conference or to visit an overseas institution. “My wife was very enthusiastic about setting up the endowment. She would be particularly pleased now that so many of people that are given fellowships are girls! She had always been interested in woman’s advancement. She was a fantastic woman.”
He continues, “And I wanted to give something back to the school which had supported me through the years. I have always been very impressed with the value of being able
to go to a conference and visit other labs during a PhD program and it seemed to me that to be able to support a visit overseas would be a valuable thing for PhD students. It opens the future for them.”
Mervyn and Katalin’s family continues to have strong connection with the ANU with both of their children, Barrie and Elizabeth, having studied at the University and now their grandson, Edward, intends to commence his PhD here. Mervyn’s long-standing contribution to the ANU still thrives today in his role as Emeritus Professor. Just last year he published his second book –‘Materials Science for Structural Geology’. A culmination of his distinguished research career was perhaps best acknowledged when he was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1962, and, in 2004, he was the recipient of the Walter Bucher Medal of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In his acceptance speech he remarked, “I was lucky over the years, first at one-teacher country schools and later at a city high school and at University, to have very supportive and inspiring teachers. And since then I have enjoyed the support, encouragement, and friendship of many colleagues.” As we have yours – thank you Mervyn.
Sophia CallendarMervyn using his HPT Machine at ANU
Katalin and Mervyn at the University of Chicago – July 1950.
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Profiles
Providing students with life-changing opportunities
"I wanted to give something back to the school which had supported me through the years. I have always been very impressed with the value of being able to go to a conference and visit other labs during a PhD program and it seemed to me that to be able to support a visit overseas would be a valuable thing for PhD students. It opens the future for them.”
- Emeritus Professor Mervyn Paterson
Meet one of the students that Mervyn and Katalin Paterson have supported
PhD Scholar, Sarlae McAlpine was the 2010 recipient of The Mervyn and Katalin Paterson Travel Fellowship With the funding provided by the fellowship, Sarlae attended the major international Goldschmidt conference held in Prague, Czech Republic and studied for two months at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. Sarlae explains, “The fellowship allowed me to begin a fruitful collaboration with the University of Bristol. Students and Academics have since travelled between these institutions and the projects generated from this initial link are exciting and are attracting significant interest. Personally, it gave me confidence in myself and my project and I gained a valuable addition to my supervisory panel.”
Having spent her childhood on Norfolk Island, Sarlae developed a great appreciation for how big the wider world was, and the opportunities that travel afforded. “I feel that coming from such a small external territory of Australia gave me a different view of what being Australian, and attending Australia’s number one university meant.” Now in the final stages of her PhD, Sarlae has been researching a pristine suite of rare mantle xenoliths. This was a petrological study of peridotites recovered from three volcanic arcs in the Western Pacific: the West Bismarck Arc, Tabaf-Lihir-Tanga-Feni Arc and the Solomon Islands.
Sarlae has recently commenced full time employment as a Geoscientist in the Minerals and Natural Hazards Division at Geoscience Australia, a world leader in providing first class geoscientific information and research. She explains, “My current project is within the Earth Monitoring and Hazards group, measuring deformation of Merapi Volcano (Indonesia) using satellite based radar interferometry (InSAR). Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia and this project has applications for future real-time monitoring of surface deformation caused by the intrusion of magma beneath volcanoes.”
“Financial donations give students invaluable opportunities. It is not just about the conference you attend, or the places you get to visit. It is about how these opportunities impact on a student’s wider understanding of the role of their research, and their position in the wider academic environment. It is an enriching experience and fuels confidence and high performance both on the international stage, and back home at ANU.” Sarlae McAlpine
Congratulations to the 2012 Mervyn and Katalin Paterson Travel Fellowship recipients Claire Krause and Surya Pachhai.
To discuss ways in which you can make an impact on the future of Earth Sciences contact Mary Anne King, Philanthropy Manager, Research School of Earth Sciences 61 2 6125 1120 [email protected]
I N T E R N A T I O N A L A W A R D S F O R O U T S T A N D I N G A L U M N IAt the Fall Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in December 2012, three former staff and students of the School were honoured for outstanding contributions to geophysical research and service.
Robert C. (Bob) Liebermann (Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow 1970-1976) was presented with the Edward A Flinn III award ‘for a long career of unselfish cooperation in research’ through facilitating, coordinating and implementing activities that have benefitted the mineral physics community’. Throughout his long and distinguished research and teaching career (at Stony Brook University since 1976), Bob has been a wonderful mentor to countless students and postdocs, especially in his chosen field of ‘indoor seismology’, and worked tirelessly on the development of facilities for shared use by the high-pressure research community. This unselfish commitment to the advancement of US national and international research in mineral physics was the hallmark of Bob’s time as a Co-Director of the multi-institution Center for High-Pressure Research [CHiPR], and later as President of the NSF-funded Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences [COMPRES] (2003-2010).
David Mainprice (Ph D student 1977-1981) was elected to Fellowship of the AGU for his ‘groundbreaking laboratory work, observations, and computations relating fundamental mineral physics to problems in seismology and geodynamics’. This honour, bestowed each year on just 0.1% of the AGU’s membership, reflects David’s sustained interest in and seminal contributions to our understanding of rock deformation. His research (at the Université Montpellier 2 since 1986) has focused on the way in which rocks deform (i.e. change their shape) when exposed to tectonic stress. In particular, he has investigated deformation resulting from the motion of crystal defects called dislocations, and the resulting preferred orientation of minerals and associated anisotropy (direction dependence) of seismic wave speeds.
David Simpson (Ph D student 1970-1973) was awarded the Waldo E Smith Medal for ‘extraordinary service to geophysics through progressive and dedicated leadership of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)’. After graduation from ANU, David Simpson worked as a research scientist/senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University on the seismic activity induced by the filling of water reservoirs and on satellite remote sensing. His ‘temporary’ move from the position of Associate Director for Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics at Lamont to the presidency of IRIS in 1991 has culminated in continuing leadership over more than 20 years of this large and highly successful NSF-supported university consortium. On account of its success in facilitating essentially all US university-based research in seismology, IRIS has become the model for the operation of shared scientific facilities in geophysics and beyond.
Catherine McCammon (1984 PhD) was awarded the Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Medal 2013 by the European Geosciences Union for “her outstanding contributions to understanding the redox and spin state of iron in the Earth’s interior and the implications of this work for the evolution of our planet”. The citation recognises Catherine’s “innovative and highly original advances in Mössbauer, X-ray emission, and X-ray absorption spectroscopies.” Throughout her distinguished career she has shared her expertise and knowledge with the science community. Catherine is currently the President of the AGU Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology section. In May she returned to Australia and presented a seminar at ANU titled ‘Iron matters and how it influences what we think we know about the deep Earth’s interior.’
Photo permission: Bayerisches Geoinstitut
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News
C E L E B R A T I N G F O R T Y Y E A R SIn The Making of The Australian National University 1946 -1996 several pages are dedicated to the establishment of a new research school of earth sciences. Staff in the Research School of Physical Sciences were very divided on the need to break off part of an original school. "Where would it all end? Would other parts of Physical Sciences – astronomy, engineering, mathematics and nuclear physics - be hived off in the same way?" At the time, the head of the Department of Geophysics, John Jaeger "looking forward to retirement in 1972, started a new campaign for a research school of earth sciences…then left it to his protégé Ted Ringwood…to keep up the momentum." From all accounts, the Council meeting late in 1971 was a torrid session with Ted Ringwood and Ernest Titterton presenting the cases for and against.
“The Research School of Earth Sciences came into being on 1 July, 1973. The nucleus of the new School was formed by the separation of the Department of Geophysics and Geochemistry from the Research School of Physical Sciences.” Annual Report - 1973
The foundation Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences was Anton Hales, a South African who had overseen the establishment of the Geoscience Division at the Southwest Centre for Advanced Studies (later the University of Texas at Dallas).
Ian McDougall, then a Senior Fellow in the School recalls: "to foster collaboration between disciplines and provide flexibility in research, the new School adopted a non-departmental structure, establishing instead a series of semi-autonomous research groups, each consisting of a small number of tenured academics, their students and support staff."
RSES Directors
A.L. Hales: 1973 – 1978 A.E. Ringwood: 1979 – 1983 K. Lambeck: 1983 – 1992 Acting Director B.L.N. Kennett: 1993
A.P. Roberts: 2010 – Aug 2012 I.N.S. Jackson: Oct 2012 – present
GEOCHRONOLOGY & ISOTOPE GEOCHEMISTRY 1980 L – R Bill Compston, Steve Clement, Gordon Newstead, John Richards, Richard Rudowski, Mick Bower, John Coles, Derek Miller, Wu Jai-Shan, Ian McDougall, Rod Page, Jennifer Barreda, Mike Vernon, Alan Chivas, Liu Dun-Yi, Norm Shram, Martin Kralik, Paul Aaron Robyn Maher,John Foster Mark Harrison.
Past Directors Professor Ted Ringwood and Professor Anton Hales.
RSES celebrates 40 years with portrait giftby Tegan Dolstra
The School hosted a morning tea in honour of the official an-niversary on 1 July, where Mrs Denise Hales presented the School with a portrait of her late husband to mark the celebra-tion.
Current Director, Professor Ian Jackson, says the School has come a long way since he witnessed its establishment as a PhD student in 1973.
“RSES has grown enormously over the last 40 years and main-tained a remarkable international reputation,” he said.
“Over the next 40 years, we aim to build on and enhance the contributions made so far, in particular by identifying the future leaders who will take the School forward.”
The portrait was painted on the back of an old wooden door by Professor and Mrs Hales’ granddaughter Megan, who studied at the ANU School of Art.
“I was overwhelmed and honoured by Denise’s offer,” said Professor Jackson. “My only concern was depriving the Hales family of it, but they will always be welcome here to come and have a look at it. We’ll probably put it up in the Director’s suite, so Anton can look over the shoulder of each of our future directors.”
Mrs Hales says Professor Hales would have loved to celebrate the anniversary with his old colleagues.
“He loved everybody here,” she said. “He would have thought it was a lot of fuss, but he would have loved it.”
Originally from South Africa, Professor Hales moved to Australia in 1973 to become the foundation director of RSES, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. After his death in 2006, the Australian Academy of Sciences established a medal in his honour.
Professor Ian Jackson and Denise Hales with the portrait of Anton.
Guests reminiscing with current Director, Ian Jackson and the former Director, now Dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Andrew Roberts.
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R O C K S T A R S Associate Professor Vickie Bennett 2013 Fellow of the Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry
We congratulate Vickie on her selection as a Fellow. This honorary title is “bestowed upon outstanding scientists who have, over some years, made a major contribution to the field of geochemistry.” She is noted for her work applying isotopic methods to revealing the early history of the Earth and the origin and growth of the continental crust.
Professor Kurt Lambeck Legion of Honour Award His Excellency the Ambassador of France, presented the Award of Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur –the highest decoration in France- to Kurt Lambeck in recognition of his contribution to science and his strong ties to France. 2013 Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London
This is the highest honour awarded by the Society to "those geologists who have had a significant influence on the science by means of a substantial body of excellent research." It was first awarded in 1837, to William Smith "the Father of English geology". Kurt is only the second Australian to be so honoured, following Professor Ted Ringwood in 1988.
Professor Ian Jackson FAA 2013 Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
This prestigious title recognises Ian’s contributions to understanding "the physical properties of earth materials and their application in understanding the Earth’s interior structure and behaviour. He has developed innovative laboratory studies of seismic properties with special application to olivine-rich rocks of the Earth’s upper mantle."
