In this section, we follow the lives of those cosmic greys who attended - either regularly or irregularly - our reunion gatherings since leaving the Falkiner department at Sydney University.
Those who have provided some biographical notes are featured in the first half. Others, who have not so contributed, follow in the second half. In each part, the names are listed in alphabetical order by surname.
The profile photos are taken from the most recent reunion in which they are (acceptably) featured.
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Andrew Bakich
 |
| 2024 |
Here is a one page summary of my
involvement and participation in research projects. Note that for various
reasons some of the listed experiments were not particularly successful. Also
note that some of the overseas collaborations had tens, or even hundreds of
physicists.
1965 – 1972
64S experiment
The
previous analogue/manual data recording has been replaced by fully digital
recording and calibration system, increasing the dynamic range of scintillator
response (Michael Rathgeber, Murray Winn, Don Melley and AB). The final series
of two Unshielded and one Meatless Sandwich runs were undertaken, confirming
and extending previously obtained results.
1973 – 1977
LAMBDA
A particle
’telescope’ consisting of plastic and liquid scintillators, plastic Cherenkov
detectors and planes of Geiger counter tubes (Lawrence Peak and AB). This
configuration provided particle identification by ionization loss, range and
time-of-flight. Fluxes of protons, deuterons and tritons were measured and
limits for fluxes of ’exotic’ charged particles were established.
1978 – 1980
E553 at Fermilab
A
first–generation hybrid emulsion experiment for charm production and decay
studies. In this experiment 15 litres of nuclear emulsion target were
supplemented with novel ‘holey’ self-marking spark chamber detectors, followed
by Cornell 8 KGauss magnet, optical spark chambers and a graded flash tube
calorimeter. Only the first run of this experiment has been completed.
1981 – 1985
E564 at Fermilab
Exposure of
20 litres of cryogenic BR2 nuclear emulsion target placed directly inside the
working volume of the Fermilab 15–foot bubble chamber. The 30 KGauss magnetic
field enabled deter mination of charges and momenta of charged secondaries
originating from the emulsion target vertex. Two data taking runs were
performed with deuterium and neon–hydrogen mixture in a wide band neutrino
beam.
1981 – 1990
SUNLAB
Sydney
UNderground physics LABoratory developed at Broken Hill at a depth of 1230
metres underground. The laboratory was established for prototyping of a water
Cherenkov solar neu trino detector module and also deployed for a series of
underground physics experiments and measurements, including studies of muon,
gamma ray and neutron fluxes.
1986 – 1994
Automated Video Scanner
A Cooke
M4000 microscope was equipped with XYZ stepping motors controlled stage, video
camera and a frame grabber, controlled by PDP11/23 computer, with software
written in Decus C and assembly language. The instrument proved to be very
useful for semi–automatic data acquisition from perpendicular emulsion chambers
exposed to heavy ion beams.
1992 – 2000
EMU01
Nuclear
emulsion stacks and chambers exposed to heavy ion beams at Brookhaven AGS and
CERN SPS accelerators. A database of some 20000 events with projectiles ranging
from 16O to 208Pb and energies from 4.5 to 200 A GeV/c
enabled studies of heavy ion collisions and attempted a search for evidence of
creation of quark-gluon plasma.
1998 – 2012
Belle at KEK
A
collaboration of physicists from 45 countries at the KEK High Energy Laboratory
in Japan, with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e−
collider. An integrated luminosity of 1000 fb−1(∼800 million BB events) was
accumulated. A large CP asymmetry in B–meson decays has been
established, followed by numerous new measurements and observations.
2012 – 20xx
Belle II at KEK
The Belle
detector and the KEKB accelerator have been substantially upgraded to operate
at peak luminosity 50 times higher than previously achieved to enable
exploration of New Physics beyond the Standard Model. The physics data taking
has commenced in 2019.
Hank Bennis
.jpg) |
| 2010 |
These notes are based on an
'interview' I (LG) did with Hank's wife June in early January, 2017. As pointed
out by Tony Parkinson, the correct spelling is 'Henk' (short for Hendrik),
whereas most of us referred to him as 'Hank'.
Hank was one of 4 siblings (3 boys and 1 girl)
born and raised in Amsterdam. Only his sister Hedda survives now and still
lives in Holland. After WW II Henk excelled and graduated from a 4-year
technical course and became a radio officer in the Dutch merchant navy. He
served on a passenger liner which plied the waters around Asia, Indonesia and
Australia.
While on shore leave in Sydney in the early 1950s,
Hank found himself at a cocktail party given by the family of one of June's
school friends and he later remembered that he decided he would marry her as
soon as he saw her coming through the door. Their romance developed over the
next few months with a constant stream of letters and flowers sent to June
while he was away.
After Hank got June's father's permission to marry
her (she was then only 18) he wanted to marry immediately but June persuaded
him that a lot more wedding preparations were needed and to wait another year
before they finally tied the knot in December 1952. The couple then
settled in Neutral Bay where they lived until 1968 when they bought the present
house in Riverview.
Meanwhile Hank enrolled in a Science degree at
Sydney University and after graduation in about 1958, he applied for, and was
accepted to a position as Technical Officer in the School of Physics,
specialising in electronics and reporting directly to Harry Messel. June
also found work at the University, managing the newsagency/book store/florist
attached to the Union (now the Holme Building).
Hank was one of seven engineers working on the
construction of SILLIAC but was also involved in electronics projects for all
departments including Cosmic Rays and teaching. He made several trips to
Narrabri to work on the SUGAR experiment. We all remember Hank as a dedicated,
caring and courteous colleague who was always respectful and wanting to help
others.
One of Harry's colleagues - a Professor from
Cornell University - was visiting the School for a number of months and worked
closely with Hank. He made Hank an extremely attractive offer to move to
Cornell. This was very tempting and when Hank mentioned this to Harry, he made
Hank "an offer he couldn't refuse" to stay in the School of Physics -
which Hank did until his retirement in the early 1990s. June also retired at
about the same time and together they travelled the world - Holland, France,
Norway, Spain, Singapore, Mexico etc - many of these destinations following
recommendations from Murray and Eveline Winn.
About 10 years ago, Hank was diagnosed with
prostate cancer and undertook various forms of treatment. A few years later,
coronary disease meant that he needed 5 stents and eventually a pacemaker in
2016. Unfortunately by this time the cancer had spread to his bones and he
needed a walking frame to get around. Hank spent some 6 weeks in North Shore
Private Hospital where he died on November 18, 2016. Hank and June had no
children, and June now lives alone in their Riverview house but gets some help
when required, from a nephew - Bob.
Tony Bray |
| 2024 |
My life history
- :
1961 Completed
physics IV
1962 - 3 Teaching
fellow USYD physics. Also involved with 64 S - M
Sc for this work
1964 Part time
lecturer USYD - filling in time while deciding what to do next.
1965 - 6 Arecibo
Ionosheric Observatory - Radio astronomy with Cyril Hazard ( ex
USYD )
1967 - 9 Uni
Manchester - Nuffield Radio Astronomy Lab, Jodrell Bank. Cosmic Ray
group. Ph D for this work.
1970 - 81 USYD
again. SUGAR.
1982
Demonstrating in USYD physics U/G labs - this time mostly waiting
for security clearance.
1983 - 2004
Dept of Defence , Marine Operations , DSTO -
doing things I'm not allowed to talk about.
Now retired.
My involvement with 64
S was mainly in comparing the response of scintillators ( energy loss devices )
with geiger counters and cloud chambers ( particle counting devices ) and how
this varies in different parts of showers and showers of different sizes.
Ron Wand also had some interest in this.
On a purely practical
note, I was responsible for correlating the main geiger array response with
the 64 S records for shower size calculations - in those days the
two systems were recorded entirely separately and the only common element
was time from two separate clocks which did not always agree ! A
lesson here somewhere.
My shift to Arecibo was
a result of the Cornell - Sydney tie up of 1964. Cyril had already gone .
There I was involved with his lunar occultation program.
Cyril was also
responsible for my move to Manchester - he was originally from there. He
wanted me to take the latest techniques we had developed in Arecibo.
However when I got
there they found I had cosmic ray experience and so I was drafted into the
completely new field of radio pulse emission from large air showers.
This was being done at
Jodrell Bank because it needed facilities and expertise in making radio
receiving systems. Most of the particle detectors in the triggering
system came from Atomic Energy Research Establishment , Harwell.
Also the lab was
located in the country side, mostly surrounded by farmland grazing cattle
, where the radio noise level was reasonably low. This was fine
until an outbreak of foot and mouth disease when it was certainly not so great.
After being away
for 5 years , I returned to Sydney and was offered a place on the SUGAR
team. A few research students, Juris and I worked on the unshielded
spark chamber detectors used to measure the electron component of SUGAR showers.
Because I was one of the few who did not have regular teaching
commitments, I found myself running backwards and forwards to Narrabri ,
carting stuff and doing those jobs that need to be fitted in
yesterday.
When SUGAR closed ,
was dismantled and the result analysis wrapped up , it was time to
move on again.
However because of my
time in US when I was technically employed by the US Air Force, the security
clearance for Defence took for ever - or so it seemed - and I
found myself filling in time again - teaching.
David Crawford
 |
| 2024 |
Vale David Crawford (December 2024)
(see David's contribution in the 'm-unit array' tab)
David submitted this paper for publication:
Joe Czamara
.jpg) |
| 2002 |
as related by Andrew Fisher
I always thought that
Joe was a great technician. I remember when I first walked into the workshop
being very impressed by the pair of skis hanging on the east wall. Joe had had
shaped them out of hickory and then steamed them to a beautiful camber and curving
tips. I don't think he ever put the bindings on and they might not have lasted
long on an Australian icy downhill and maybe they were a bit of nostalgia on
his part.
The workshop always
seemed to be full of “foreign orders” and he would always be helping students
and staff with any of their fix-it problems.
I think we understood
each other and he knew I understood something about Europe. For instance I knew
that Poles hated everybody because at one time or other in the last thousand
years they had been oppressed by nearly every nation in Europe. So 30 years
after the war he told some of his history.
When the Germans and
the Russians divided up Poland between them in September 1939 Joe was
immediately conscripted and sent to fight the Russians coming in from the
east.
Then Joe said he had a
very lucky break. He was fighting in a graveyard when he was wounded in the
ankle by a chip off a gravestone from a ricocheting bullet. As a result of this
he was evacuated to the German side and missed out on the Katyn extermination
or a similar end. After he recovered he went back to his home town where his
father owned a salt mine.
He worked there for a
while but took the precaution of getting a forester's licence which meant he
could leave the town at any time. He said the first six months of German
occupation everything was normal. Then there was an incident to a German nearby
and all the inhabitants were assembled in the town square and then marched to a
forest clearing with picks and shovels. Well, while digging their own graves
and despite the machine guns they all made a dash for the forest and most of
them survived. (It didn't sound like Joe was there.)
At this point Joe moved
into the forest and became a guerilla. He said they even printed a newssheet.
There were three groups; the Royalists, the Communists and the Nationalists.
Joe lovingly recalled that his nationalist masthead logo was a dagger dripping
red blood. Well amazingly he survived from 1940 till 1943. I asked him what
their death rate was. Although not answering my question directly he said ”TB
was the biggest killer - we were always cold, always wet, and always
moving.”
At about the end of
this time as the Russians were coming again to liberate Poland he and a comrade
decided they weren't going to live under the Russians so they headed South and
smuggled their way into Switzerland. He said they had loads of money and loads
of arms. They needed papers so in Switzerland they went to the Soviet embassy
and said they wanted to go back to Poland. So with Russian papers they went to
Italy. Unfortunately about this time (September 1943) Italy surrendered and the
Germans took over and he was rounded up and sent to the German run camp at
Ascoli Piceno. See my Ascoli Piceno story in Joe Czamara - A minor trilogy.
This camp was liberated about June 1944.
At Joe's funeral his
son told me that after that he went to northern Italy and learned demolition (I
don't know with which army). And later went to England. He enjoyed the story of
the customs officer who after discovering his lovely Beretta in his luggage
said “ You won't be needing this here, Sir”, Joe loved the “Sir”. So I did not
find out till after he died that our all-round technician was also an expert in
demolition!
He insisted that the
Katyn Massacre of Polish prisoners was done by the Russians, whereas I had
heard from my family socialist journalist friend, Alexander Werth, that it was
the Germans who did it. I didn't disagree very strongly because I had never looked
into it but Joe said you wait and see. Sure enough in 1990 the Russians finally
admitted to it.
Joe being a man of his
time with strong principles was very worried about his daughters virginity .
Even in 1977 there were many more important things to worry about and I think
he gave his daughters a hard time. So I would laugh and laugh at him and try to
explain to him the modern age, and once he answered “ Just wait, just wait till
you have daughters!” Well 42 years later I have two daughters and no, I'm not
worried about their virginity.
When I went to NASA in
1972 they had the very best of American craftsmen who could pick up a lump of
material and walking from machine to machine could in a few minutes grow a
beautiful 3-dimensional object accurate all over to a thousandth of an inch. They
also had very good general technicians, most of them can-do guys from the
second world war, And Joe would have compared well with them. I once said to
Murray that I thought he was a good technician and got an “Umph” in reply. Well
they were very different people with very different histories.
Once I saw a Mill's
Cross guy come into the workshop with a perspex box 10x6x4cm with 4 in-line
banana sockets along the front. Well Joe made 40 of them and I was there when
the guy comes back with a similar box with 4 banana plugs and plugs it into to
one of the copies. I saw the astonished look on Joe's face. Afterwards he told
me it was completely random. He had assumed as anybody would that the sockets
were for plugs on wires. He had picked up a pair of dividers and spaced out
four holes in a row on a template and made 40 socket boxes which miraculously
were fitted by the plug boxes. Well, once in hundred years it falls jam side
up.
Can't think of any
other Joe stories.
Except maybe the
kumquat brandy?
Andrew Fisher 2019
Joe Czamara -
a minor Trilogy
Part
1 1977
I had returned to Australia and I
had been doing a few months work and was hanging around the physics building.
I had grown
a white streak in my hair and everybody was teasing me about it.
I used to tell them it was because of my first
mistress, and for some reason they
all thought this was very
funny and went off
holding their sides with
laughter.
But Joe understood !
“I was in a camp,” “in the middle
of Italy.”
he says,
Part
2 1943
[ Joe had told me years earlier about being a Polish guerilla
against the Germans and when the Russians re-invaded Poland he had no intention
of living under them.
He travelled to Switzerland and
then to Italy where he got caught. Luckily they
didn't know what he had been doing so he was only
thrown into an internment camp.]
“I was
in a camp.” “In the middle of Italy.”
“When I arrived, there was terrible tension in the camp.
It was
run by German female Commandant. Previously she had
murdered an inmate but it had
been witnessed by another prisoner and everybody knew
that he had to die.
Every day the tension got worse and as the Americans inched their way up the Italian peninsular it became almost unbearable,
because everybody knew
that this man must die.”
Joe suggested that maybe they could save the guy, so they built a cubby hole in the woodpile against the kitchen wall and they
hid him in it. He was fed from the kitchen though a small
hole.
“Well we saved him, and when the Americans liberated the camp he got out.“ “The
only thing was, he went into the wood pile
with jet black hair
and when he came out it was
as white as snow !”
Part 3 1978
Joe and his wife had come to a party at our place in Coogee and he met an Italian
friend (born about
1933) who had lived for years
with my mother.
Joe asked him where in Italy he came from
“ Oh its just
a little place that nobody has hear of.” says Fausto apologetically
“Where exactly? “ asks Joe.
“ A little place called Ascoli
Piceno” “ I know it well.” says Joe
“You've been to Ascoli Piceno??” says
the Italian incredulously.
“ I lived there for nearly a year” says Joe “ - well not quite, I lived in the camp
outside
of town.”
“YOU lived in that camp
!” says Fausto “ why we kids used to
sell tobacco to you guys !”
[By tobacco he meant
second hand tobacco from discarded cigarette butts.] “Whats your name ? says Joe
“Fausto Marini” he says
“Oh, your father ran the taxi service” Says Joe like
it happened yesterday.
So an Italian meets a Pole in Australia and finds
that the Pole knew his father 35 years earlier.
A very typical
Australian story.
Colin Gauld.JPG) |
| 2015 |
While engaged in work for my doctorate with the nuclear emulsion group I spent one year lecturing to medical students enrolled in their version of Physics 1. I enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to prepare myself for a career in tertiary physics teaching. My plan was to do a Dip Ed (which I completed in 1964, I think with Rod Cross), teach science for three years in a high school and then return to a School of Physics, hopefully better prepared for teaching.
However, I felt so comfortable teaching high school physics and mathematics that I remained for seven years in state and private schools in Australia and the UK.
In 1972 I took up a position as lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales where I was involved in the preparation of science teachers and began to be active in science education research. In 1991 I was transferred to the newly formed School of Teacher Education at Oatley where I remained until retirement in January 1999 when the School (along with the Oatley Campus) was closed. At that stage I was Head of School.
During that time I have been a member of the Australian Institute of Physics, The Science Teachers Association of NSW, The Australasian Science Education Research Association, The Association for Science Education (UK) and the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group. My career has taken me a long way from cosmic ray physics but I have pursued (along with other things) an interest in the teaching of mechanics and in its history. Other research interests have included the conceptions students have about physics concepts before being taught, the history and philosophy of science and science teaching, and the relationship between science and Christianity.
Since retirement I have been, for a short time, an Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong and, until recently, a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales.
Leo Goorevich |
| 2025 |
Personal
- Born in Tientsin
(now Tianjin), China.
- Arrived in Sydney
at age 9 on January 1, 1952. Attended Waverley Primary School (1 year),
Neutral Bay Primary (2 years), North Sydney Boys High (5 years). Started
Science degree at Sydney Uni in 1960.
- Married in
1970, bought a house in Chatswood and had two sons: Michael (born in 1972,
two kids and an engineer with Cochlear) and Steven (born in 1975, three
kids and disabled since 2007 after a work accident on a construction
site).
- Divorced in 2005.
Subsequently had a partner for 6 years until she gave me the flick - but
we are still friends.
- started a personal
website in 2015 - https://leogoo.wordpress.com/ - which will
remain a work in progress no doubt for some time!
Professional:
- Did Physics IV in
1963 - the practical component being in the emulsions group. Shared room
in the basement with Laurie Byrne and John Syriatowicz, while being
supervised by Lawrie Peak, Colin Gauld and Tony Gray.
- Started in SUGAR
1964 - initially testing and building the shift registers which stored the
timing signal and then testing and building the high voltage supply for
the photo-multipliers. Eventually focused on the computer side of things
writing some of the initial programs to analyse the collected data.
Submitted thesis in 1969 - on the energy spectrum. Also started the
computer diploma course as a side line where I wrote the "Silliac
Simulator" with Peter Poole. Then found myself unemployed.
- In order to put
food on the table and pay the rent, I worked at Macquarie Uni as Senior
Tutor in 1969 until Murray Winn phoned me to ask if I was interested in
taking over the position of Michael Rathgeber, who had died while visiting
Japan. I accepted the offer before he had finished the sentence!
- Professional
Officer in SUGAR 1970-1975 analysing the data from Narrabri. The computer
programs were affectionately named Chunk1, 2 and 3 by Michael Rathgeber.
Also continued the Monte Carlo simulation work started by Michael,
- Then I got bored
and asked my friend John Verne if the company where he worked
(International Programming) could use my talents. i became his technical
support person while he tried to flog IBM system software packages.
When he left the company, I took over his position as Manager and
then Director.
- The company folded
in 1980 and I started my own - Boole & Babbage Australia. Did
reasonably well there until the American parent company cancelled my
agency agreement around 1989 in order to set up their own subsidiary in
Australia.
- Continued as
consultant in computer and network support, as well as dabbling in various
software product distributorships.
- Returned to Sydney
Uni - in IT department in 1998 as the university's Y2K Project Manager,
then Team Manager in software development for student admin system
2000-2011.
- Retired in 2011.
- Subsequently
mostly occupied in various voluntary activities - OzHarvest; Refugee
Language Program (at Sydney Uni); Powerhouse Museum; Australian Museum,
Migrant Home Tutoring; picking up grandkids from school (until I was no
longer needed); playing bridge. maintaining several websites etc; area
manager for Census - even worked for a few months in a computer shop!
Jim McCaughan |
| 2025 |
As for extended reminiscences I am probably the one that is least retired in that I still have 2 children at school, one doing HSC, first wedding 2 weeks ago and 2 wedding in September, writing my magnum opus and engaged in other correspondence. So let's take a few minutes now to contribute a token one for solidarity's sake.
Honours year 1960 worked with Dick Collins on cloud chambers under Don Millar. Should mention that a Silliac project on the response of the M-unit array was under the supervision of Dave Crawford; programming in machine code. Then did MSc on same double chambers under Millar in '61. Submitted Feb. '62 and left the following day for Sulphur Mtn, Banff, Alberta, Canada, for another double CC exercise. So never really worked on the 64S, but still helped Siok Hoon Seet with her little cloud chamber associated with the 64S as was Ron Wand's double CCs obtained from Jamaica, where John Lehane had worked as well as a good friend of mine, Bob Reid from Leeds had worked. These double CCs were part of McCusker's initiative when he was in Dublin, but continued with the Canadian initiative when in Sydney.
I remember that progress meetings were held in '61 in I think what is now rm 418 just along from the stair well from 2nd year lab, just past the display cabinets and beyond the 2 rooms, one occupied by Geoffrey Builder, the other by Phyllis Nicol. All the staff sat around a long table and the students on an outer ring around the staff. Harry Messel commented that I would learn about cold, when Millar (I think) announced I was being sent there the following year.
When I came back from Canada in '63, continued to work on the EAS density spectrum as the data continued to accumulate courtesy of Brian O'Donnell based in Calgary. In 1965 joined the permanent staff as a Senior Tutor-Demonstrator in the 2nd Year lab following the urging of Hugh Murdoch (hodoscope geiger counter array and recently deceased), who also had such a position. Once I could support myself Harry M allowed me to start a PhD working with Henry Rathgaber on Image Intensifiers, but supervised nominally by McCusker. The intensifiers proved to be frustrating as our English Electric ones were noisy and just as we tracked down the sources of the noise, some guy named Reynolds would publish as we were starting to write it up.
At the same time schools swapped from LC to HSC and an extra year. The fallow year was '67 and Charlie Watson-Munro assigned me the job of ordering and acceptance testing all the new equipment for the first year lab and John Lehane gave me an experiment to develop (C4). We set up prototypes of the 12 experiments in the deserted 1st year lab. WIBS Smith thought I was taking too long on developing my black body radiation experiment and barged in to fix it. He left puzzled. I learnt more about one aspect of experimental physics than in Cosmic Rays in that the information was not readily at hand to copy; every step had to be thought out from scratch.
As the caravan rolled on to 2nd year I had the job of doing a Frank-Hertz experiment helped by Murray Winn who designed a triac controlled heater for the oven. My other job was to learn about all the experiments in 2nd Year lab and instruct staff and demonstrators in their operation and results. So ''67. '68 were particularly heavy years and it took three years ('68-'70) to nut out all the quirks of the new 1st Year labs. I was by this time transferred to 1st Year but '68 was heavily committed to 2nd Year as well. So the PhD suffered (I should have been advised to suspend my candidature during this time). 5 years were almost up and had nothing worthwhile to write up. We had just one photograph of light generated by an air shower in one of the 64S plastic scintillators.
After some discussion I was allowed to write up my Canadian CC work once it was realised I hadn't used it for my MSc. So after 5 years it was almost back to square one. Submitted in '73, graduated '74. Went to Leeds in '76 where one of my thesis examiners was Cavendish (!) Professor, J.G.Wilson, not to be confused with C.T.R. Wilson, but both of CC fame. Eventually 2 research papers were published in JPhysG and two conference presentations at Paris in '81 and Bangalore '83 given. At Bangalore shared a room with Murray and Juris. Murray had spent a year at Leeds a couple of years before me and Chris Bell was there before me. Ran into Phil Riley at the Paris Conference.
In '82 had three papers on Harry M's desk in three months, Harry wrote me a short note saying congratulations Jim you have made it. The following month I met Genevieve and a whole new chapter in life started. The eighties were devoted to history of physics, biographies of our early professors and a history of the School in the Science Faculty centenary volume 'Ever Reaping Something New' . That came about because of a brochure done for the university on the Physics Building and the Faculty Chapter led to the 'Messel Era'.
18 months work on Vonwiller for 635 words in the Australian Dictionary of Biography did not seem to me a good investment. Vonwiller had written about his predecessors Threlfall and Pollock and had made my job of writing these two up straight forward as well as their both being FRSs there was international recognition. But no one had written about Vonwiller and what was worse a dodgy history was in existence of Cancer Research in the early years of the present Physics building (A28), which was marred by scandal and suicide. Vonwiller had to rescue it. So in a word I was 'jack' of history and biography.
My final contribution to Cosmic Rays came at the Dublin Conference in '91: thirty years after starting out. I was able to profile the development of the density spectrum in the lower atmosphere and to reproduce all aspects of the double index and break point. A few years ago Alan Watson FRS from Leeds was doing a history of EAS and told me I had the last word on the density spectrum.
So you see I was never part of 64S (except for Seet and quark search with Ian Cairns, i.e. wherever CCs were involved), or SUGAR; never part of the big teams of Cosmic Rays.
Afraid that will have to do. All the best, Jim.
Derek Nelson
.jpg) |
| 2020 |
The Unreliable Memories of Derek Nelson
Feb 2016
It was the time of the ten pound Pom and I was a cold wet science teacher in Northern Ireland. The solution to my problem was slowly becoming obvious so I coughed up my ten pounds and got the boat arriving in Sydney in September 1959. A great move which didn’t quite allow for the fact that it was almost my last ten pounds. On my last few shillings I accompanied a chap from the boat who was looking for the Australian Atomic Energy and so we ended up as cleaners at CSR Chemicals at Rhodes. Don’t ask – we migrants can get a bit confused. A month later – promotion – they found we could read and write and promoted us to the plastics laboratory – 29 nationalities out of 33 people – a great introduction to Australia. However the shift work there was ruining my social life so I looked for another science job in Sydney. Yes there was one at the Falkiner Nuclear Research Department of Sydney University in early 1960 with a friendly English Professor . Technical Officer it was called and had something to do with a little hut out the back, valves, transistors, Geiger counters, cosmic rays and a computer. I think I got the job because I had got the school kids in Belfast to build their own transistors from glass diodes and then make a radio from them but apart from that my electronics was abysmal and I had never heard of a computer. My further education was handed over to Dave Crawford, Chris Wallace and Mike Rathgeber who must all have wondered how I got the job.
Mainly I was to maintain the M unit cosmic ray shower detection system. Back then we had 92 M units each of which consisted of an army ammunition box containing 3 geiger counters and their associated valve electronics. These boxes were spread over an area of about half a hectare at the back of the Physics building. These boxes were not too waterproof so each was covered by a thin metal cover which provided a great home for redback spiders who preferred peace and quiet to my company. Each box could send a signal to the “hut” if all 3 geiger counters went off at the same time. A recording device had been built by Mike and Chris which produced several feet of 5 level paper tape giving the response of the M unit array to the cosmic ray shower that had been detected. This paper tape had to be entered into the Silliac computer daily under the control of a few computer programs written by Dave Crawford and Peter Poole. Peter was finishing off a thesis on the preferential direction of cosmic radiation. He was fortunate that this preferential direction lasted until he got his PhD. Under my supervision the preferential direction disappeared!
I also got a few trips out to the South Head lighthouse where the neutrino experiment conducted by Henry Rathgeber , Hugh Murdock and Don Millar was being wound up. I can still remember an outing to South Head with Laurie Peak on a St Patricks day when I cut into a few mains cables that were known to be inactive only to find they were still active!
I was living in a garage at Kogarah still with the chap from the boat who being more persistent than I had by now got himself a job at the Atomic Energy at Sutherland. Dave Jauncey drove past Kogarah and was kind enough to pick me up most days. Dave and I both were very interested in the early TV golf shows featuring great golfers like Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus who often played at various US Country Clubs. It was but a short move to the naming of West Lab Country Club where many of us had a morning cup of coffee. Many matters were discussed but one I remember – being able to hit a match off the lino with a golf club. It wasn’t easy The West lab was beside the electronics workshop which was run by Tom Playle and Joe Czamara – great guys who could always be relied on in a crisis.
I shared both an office and the hut out the back with Ron Wand who was starting to wind up his studies on penetrating cosmic ray showers with a lot of lead and Geiger counters in the hut. Ron was a great character and we shared many adventures together. When Ron and Judy left for Arecibo in 1965 I inherited his old Austin Lancer as my first car.
In 1961 to get a better idea of the density of cosmic ray particles in a shower we added 4 big boxes each containing 48 geiger counters to the array (see photo). Each Geiger tubes was connected to a thyratron(2D21) - valves which turned on and stayed on when a cosmic ray shower was detected. These thyratrons needed a fair amount of power and we used a 200volt supply made up of a heap of car batteries. I got a feeling for the power of the battery heap when I accidentally touched this supply one rainy day when doing a spot of maintenance. I couldn’t speak for an hour after!
In 1962 we were joined at the Country Club by the Bernie Mills group – in particular Arthur Watkinson and Terry Black who added considerably to our social life. I can still remember joining them at the nearest pub - the Lalla Rookh a few times at 5.45 for the “six oclock swill” I would find that I had 6 schooners waiting for me which had to be finished by 6.00 (Well possibly 6.10) Staggering off home after this could present some problems. Physics School progress meetings were held once a month under the stern eye of Harry Messel and were a great source of entertainment for us lesser fry especially after the six oclock swill! Harry didn’t let any questions to professors be evaded and it was common to hear him say “For god’s sake XXXXX just answer the fellow”
Joining Physics had worked out for me - my social life had improved – and in 1961 I got married to Beryl. This must have made Murray Winn happy as before that I got an unusual number of phone calls on the electronic workshop phone which Murray had spoken to me about! Beryl and I got a house at Bronte in 1962. When my son Tim arrived in 1966 Murray was one of the first to turn up with a set of white wooden gates to stop Tim escaping.
The whole Silliac business was rather exciting. Silliac was big and delicate and to some of us threatening with its big banks of neon lights. Programs and data got read in on 5 level paper tape. 5 level tape was rather fragile especially if all the 5 holes were punched. We all had to line up outside Silliac twice a day to try out our new or modified program under the stern eye of the duty operator. The queue consisted of people from all over the University so some stress was obvious. Several times I saw people so nervous that they tore their 5 level tape as they were trying to load it. We all got pretty good at repairing 5 level tape! With its valve electronics Silliac often needed repair and then the crew of 5 engineers would swing into action. As time on Silliac was very valuable a few of us cosmic ray people ended up doing the all night shift on Silliac from time to time.
In 1965 Silliac was replaced by the English Electric KDF9 computer so we had a lot of fun changing all the programs from tapes to cards.
Squash was a regular feature of life at Physics and Mac, Laurie Peak and I would play twice most weeks. I was always the weakest of the three but it was good fun. I think Mac liked to win.
About 1966 we went on a week end fishing expedition to Lake George down south on the way to Canberra. Don Melley had got a sailing boat. We camped out on the shore. Don asked if there were any snakes around and we assured him that this terrain was lousy for snakes. We had to revise this advice slightly next morning when we were joined by a character with a hessian bag. This fellow informed us that this was the best spot for tiger snakes in NSW! We actually caught a few perch from the boat but then a southerly buster came up and we made a frantic dash for safety across the shallow lake water and through barbed wire fences losing all the fishing gear! Don never suggested another fishing trip!
Hakki Ogelman made a big impression when he came in 1968 and not just on the quark front. He spotted the 2 peach trees at the back of the M unit array and got them sprayed and then organised us all to make a huge jar of punch. It featured at many a party.
In 1969 the University organised a 50 mile walk – from Richmond via Blacktown back to Sydney. Quite a few of the cosmic ray crew gave it a go. After a game of squash I joined them in taking the Uni bus to Richmond. I seem to remember Mick Ryan, Don Melley, Andy Bakich and Leo Goorevich. We left Richmond about 7pm and got walking. I learnt an important lesson then. Preparation and training were important. My walking speed slowly dropped and by 5am I had reached Blacktown but was unable to lift my leg high enough to get off the road onto the footpath. It was time for plan B. Sitting in that train back to Redfern was really good but walking back to the Uni was really bad. When the new City to Surf fun run was proposed in 1971 I was still suffering from a failure complex but at least I knew about preparation and training. I have been doing the City to Surf ever since with many “personal worsts”
In 1969 we all had a memorable day sitting in one of the Physics lecture theatres waiting to see if a man could set foot on the moon – he did - and the finances for our cosmic ray research from the US started to diminish. At the time Juris Ulrichs and I had been designing a spark chamber array to help with the SUGAR array at Narribri and this financial shortage put some strain on what we could buy. We eventually made our own neon filled glass boxes, our own 30kv power supplies and our own spark gaps with a lot of help from Joe Czamara. I spent a couple of weeks up at the A frame house at Bohena creek and somehow found myself being interviewed by a local reporter. I tried to explain the full set up and told him about the great professor whose idea it was. As you can see the reporter was somewhat confused – probably couldn’t understand my accent and made not a mention of the great man in his newspaper article. On my return from Narribri I met with an unexpected hostility from the great man –he didn’t even want to beat me at squash - nothing mentioned about the newspaper article but it became evident that my days were numbered.
I suppose I was lucky – a professional officer job had just come up over the road at the Chemistry department. Mass spectrometers had developed greatly after their use in the Manhattan project during the war and had just reached the stage where well-endowed chemistry departments could buy a commercial unit. They provided a lot of assistance in confirming the identity of new compounds which chemists keep producing. Chemists back then were a whiz with a test tube and a Bunsen burner but were pretty lost with valve and transistor electronics, computers, high voltages and vacuum physics. The new commercial mass specs required a lot of maintenance and had much room for improvement. I fitted in well. We got chemical identification problems from all over Australia. Communication with the locals was important and I helped set up the first Australian and New Zealand mass spectrometry conference and became local convenor at monthly mass spectrometer talks for Sydney. We got a PDP8I minicomputer to record data coming from the mass spectrometer. It had a 32k memory disk which weighed about 5kg! Also a 4k memory. Wasn’t much improvement from Silliac!
I even got my revenge! In my first year at chemistry someone organised an inter school squash match with Physics. As it happened I played Mac. A lot of the time I just aimed to hit the ball at him instead of the front wall. I won ingloriously and after the game we both sat panting and sweating in the change rooms. “I don’t know what happened there” he said. I kept quiet. I hadn’t really wanted to leave cosmic rays!
After a few years at the Chemistry department at Sydney University I moved to Uni NSW where the School of Chemistry had just got the first chemical ionisation mass spectrometer in Australia. This offered the chance of getting even better ways of identifying new chemical compounds but was suffering from a lot of high voltage breakdowns. Again things went well. I got a Churchill Fellowship in 1982 to spend a few months in the UK mainly at Warwick Uni and also to have a look at the international mass spec scene . We built the first Australian fast atom bombardment source for this mass spectrometer which extended its range to very delicate molecules that flew apart with ordinary ionisation methods. We went on to build a computer system to record and present all the data.
However School of Chemistry finances started to drop off and it was time to move on again. This time it was to the Australian Jockey Club at Randwick in 1989. Strangely enough the AJC which did a lot of drug testing on horses and dogs then had more mass spectrometers than anyone else in Sydney. Mass spectrometers were becoming smaller , cheaper and more reliable but now they were all under computer control which meant a lot of programming. Had a good 10 years at Randwick. Gave up in the end when Beryl needed a bit of caring.
In retirement I have been treasurer of the BIKEast local cycling group with whom I did a fair bit of bike riding in NSW. Saw Dave Jauncey one day at a caf̩ in Cowra. Took him a while to recognise me in my lycra cladding! I have also been . president of the Eastern Suburbs branch of the Association of Independent Retirees for 12 years. We were fortunate to have both Laurie Peak and Laurie Wilson come along and give us talks in recent times. We retirees spend a lot of our conversational time talking about our health problems. In my dotage and looking back to the theories of our old cosmic ray days I have come up with a live-longer theory. We retirees have a 90% chance of death from the so-called chronic diseases (heart attacks, dementia, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis etc) The biggest factor in all these diseases is age. Now there are many theories of ageing but the simplest that could explain all these varied diseases is a decline in the immune system. I was very happy to read a fairly recent biology paper on old mice showing that they had a lot of senescent immune system stem cells which did little apart from annoy adjacent cells. Also this biology paper suggested a fix Рfasting - old mice fasted 3 days a month digested their senescent cells and when feeding resumed went on to build new fully working immune system stem cells. These old mice lasted much longer. Fortuitously I had started the 5/2 diet (little tucker 2 days a week) a couple of years earlier. Now I feel condemned to carry it on as a one man experiment and see if this biology also works for people. Wish me luck!
Tony Parkinson
 |
| c. 2018 |
My contributions to the SUGAR and cloud chambers experiments are posted separately. I left SydUni in 1974 after 15 years there. I had obtained an offer of a Lectureship in Physics at Caulfield, which became part of Monash University (*), but I couldn't make the move to Melbourne due to family commitments. I started a coaching/teaching business, which suited me as I had enough time for continuing my research studies using Macquarie and Sydney Uni libraries. Without access to computing and other facilities, I became a theoretician. I researched and wrote up a number of topics, and I can briefly outline some interests, and why they began. My interest in Cascade Theory was sparked by reading the theoretical papers especially by Janossy and Messel and his colleagues. Also from my time in Cosmic Rays, the development of a phase-locked oscillator (for SUGAR) produced a certain class of nonlinear difference equations, which were proven to be purely periodic. I also intensively studied Generalized Hypergeometric Functions, after being initially inspired by the delightful book "Generalized Hypergeometric Series" by W.N. Bailey (**).
Finally, I had to sell the business. While recovering from a long illness I had to get back into the workforce and the NSW Dept of Education was offering older graduates paid studentships to complete an accelerated DipEd in Mathematics in Newcastle. This produced a mixed bunch of interesting people (like two petroleum geologists in a recession and even a postman!), and we were put up in the Maitland Nurses' Home and bussed in to Newcastle each day. The DipEd was completed in 6 months and I taught maths in NSW schools for a couple of years. Personally, I quite enjoyed meeting teachers and students from various backgrounds and I was a bit surprised to find most of the teachers I met were quite dedicated, despite being compulsorily unionized and in the NSW Public Service. On sports days I even became a useful cricket and volleyball umpire, but I have to admit one of my students was the son of a NZ volleyball champion and so I was his student.
Despite the breaks between terms, I found high school maths teaching hard work for minimum rewards. Next, I applied to the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) at Pyrmont and became a Research Scientist in Operations Research supporting the Navy. Not surprisingly, there were quite a few old SydUni graduates in the heritage building on the waterfront, including our own Tony Bray from Cosmic Rays.
At DSTO my research was mostly on underwater acoustics and signal processing. In particular, I was involved in studies of passive sonar tracking in support of the Collins-class submarines then being built. As a bonus I scored a trip on one of the older Oberon-class submarines out of SydHarb to study the sonar systems. And no, it's not like the Hollywood movies! I was a little "stressed" when I had to first sign a release form including my next of kin!! I was involved with various other sonar studies including support for the new (and old) patrol boats. Also I studied bottom of the sea sonar responses and characterization, and I got outdoors as I led a team which lowered a large sonar experimental apparatus to the bottom at various places around SydHarb from a Navy crane lighter.
I took advantage of Government largesse to complete two thesis Masters degrees with a few night lectures. At SydUni I studied Applied Maths and wrote my thesis on the Lorenz Equations and Chaos Theory. At the UNSW I studied Computer Science and wrote my thesis on Document Processing. Fortunately at DSTO, I had sole use of a brand new IBM mainframe - somebody must have overlooked the desktop PC revolution. Well old blokes have to keep the neurons firing.
Always my principal research concerned passive sonar tracking, and so later I was transferred to DSTO at Salisbury, north of Adelaide to support the sonar systems for the new submarine project.
It was not all plain sailing, and I can make my observations about DSTO, which employs an army of PhDs. There are quite a few dedicated and smart scientists, but they are in a minority. I have to say Commonwealth Public Service conditions and (non-compulsory) unionization have sadly produced a culture with an awful lot of dead wood, even in senior positions. This is not a good prospect for dedicated scientists, especially those starting a career.
(*) If interested in military matters, the book "Monash - The Outsider Who Won a War" by Roland Perry is recommended.
(**) In the Maths library, but Google returns a nice pdf scan.
Lawrence Peak |
| 2025 |
(also featured in posts of June 5th and June 15th 2015)Random Recollections from Lawrie Peak
These are just a few memories that come to mind (having been prompted lovingly by Leo!) I must say firstly that Jim McCaughan has done a very good job in his book “The Messel Era” of capturing much of the early history of the School of Physics. This includes the early days of the Falkiner Nuclear Department as it was called before “Nuclear” became a dirty word.
John Malos
If anyone ever met John they would never forget him! Huge, rugged pitted face with wild hair and bushy eyebrows. One would be excused to think he sounded like a Greek until he opened his mouth. He actually sounded very much “true blue” coming from Tully with a far northern Queensland accent! He could however also speak Greek fluently which was no surprise I suppose.
He was an electronic wiz who had an intrinsic feel for the subject. Reportedly, he designed and built the first fast CRO (oscilloscope) with nanosecond timing – as it was needed for his research work. He swore by his “Bible” – the Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill ; still a great book. but necessarily dated (I don’t know about recent updates).
One day he was boasting that it was nothing to tear a telephone book in half!! I was sceptical until he took me down into the basement, grabbed the white pages next to the phone there and proceeded to tear it down the middle with his bare hands. I remained gob-smacked and the phone remained without any white pages for quite some time!
Although he looked so coarse and rugged, he delighted in fine cuisine and was quite the wine and whiskey connoisseur. He moved back to Bristol in his later years, and towards the end was in the process of buying his own Greek island ! The last time I interacted with him he was in the process of designing a solar and wind power system for his island which had no electricity at all. In fact it didn’t seem to have much of anything but it was to be his island.
Phyllis Nicol
Here was another character from the past !! I first met her in the second year laboratory. Not exactly the most attractive and she would spit in all directions as she talked to you. Her pet peeve was to wire up the necessary circuit for the experiment without writing down the principles of the experiment. If there were no principles, she would rip the circuitry apart rather violently and you would have to start again – after the principles had been finished satisfactorily of course.
She always gave me a warm welcome in her office whenever I came to her for a question or two – except that you could hardly see her for the smoke as she smoked like a chimney. She was co-author of Physics – Fundamental Laws and Principles - by Booth and Nicol which was quite a good but rather short text. I understand that the first editions had to be revised as they tried to explain surface tension purely in terms of gravity.
Hugh Murdoch
Hugh died just recently and many may have met him also in the second year laboratory. Although he moved to radioastronomy when Bernie Mills came on the scene, he started in Cosmic Rays. He was a student of Henry Rathgeber working on the magnetic spectrograph to measure the muon momentum spectrum using the South Head tunnel. Dave (Crawford) and Derek (Nelson) can fill in more details of this I am sure.
Recreation
We were big on table tennis for a while. We played in the central room right up on the roof and down in the basement before it became all built up. Leo and I once invited Stuart Butler to join us thinking that we would be able to show him a thing or two. Much older, a little portly – so we decided to go easy on him. Well after much grunting and perspiration flying in all directions, I think we were able to get a point or two. How our balloon was burst! He was REALLY good! He was also really good at bridge so we never invited him back into our midst.
We also got together for bridge. In the West Tower we would play most lunch hours. Juris, Tony (Bray) John (Sutton) and myself. I can’t remember whether Tony (Gray) joined us for some occasions but he certainly did later on.
We moved to Juris’ Office in the New Wing (Room 368) and continued with Leo. Leo was just a little better than we were and I remember him asking politely one day whether we would mind if he didn’t play with us any longer. Apparently he was picking up our bad ways and we were polluting him!
So we parted company in a very amicable way. He continued on to be a Grand Master (though missing out on our brilliant repartee) and we continued to delude ourselves that we were no too bad after all!
I currently have a desk in the very same room (368) so I have turned full circle – except that I have lost even more ability in bridge.
Although not part of the team, I have vivid recollections of extensive post mortems each Monday after the catamaran adventures over the week-end in Botany Bay. I am sure members can fill us in more here (Don Melley, Mick Ryan, Geoff Chapman ???)
I remember being invited to play tennis with Bob May, Rod Cross and a visitor who liked to play. I was to make up the fourth. In a hurry to get there I left home grabbing a junior racquet and two left shoes ( I had two pairs). After the match, the racquet was broken and my knee had succumbed. It took a while for me to walk properly again.
Assorted (in no particular order).
· Murray climbing the 150 foot tower at the Narrabri base station to service the transmitter. No-one else was bold enough!
· Laurie and Eileen Horton arriving (by Land Rover) from England (With Harold the dog in tow)!
· Laurie’s grand vision of a fireplace that seemed to be in the construction phase forever at Yarramalong (it may still be!)
· Great hilarity from the 346 club as various beers were sampled (and sampled and sampled)
· Fred Yuan’s seminar with Bob May in the front seat. Fred was totally annihilated by Bob’s criticisms and comments. Bob May went on to elevated positions in the UK (close to God) – Fred successfully completed his MSc thesis.
· Morning teas out on Physics Road at 11 AM. Ron holding forth generally loudly and maybe throwing his thongs about from time to time.
· Murray racing around banging on all door shouting “everyone out, everyone out – we have a triple!!” The first triple coincidence from the pilot SUGAR array around the campus.
CBA (Brian) McCusker
What can I say about Brian McCusker? I first met and heard him in our fourth year honours course when he gave a course on cosmic rays. He was really a very good lecturer with a wealth of history behind him - having worked at the University of Liverpool (working with Chadwick) and then the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, interacting with such immortals as Janossy and Schrodinger and even supervising Harry Messel on air shower simulation studies.
In those early days he was a scientist with international recognition, and his supervision of the installation, operation and running of the M-Unit array, the 64 scintillator array (unshielded, shielded and sandwich) associated cloud chambers as well as the Pilliga arrays brought keen interest at all the international cosmic ray conferences.
It must be said that all those early research efforts were well founded. Examining the cores of air showers with good resolution, establishing the occurrence of high transverse momentum interactions in air shower cores and extending the energy spectrum via SUGAR (including examination of the knee and ankle) gave rise to much interest and some friendly controversy (with Trumper at the University of Kiel for example).
Another idea that was certainly a good idea at the time was to search for quarks using cloud chambers in the cores of air showers. No-one had ever done this before; and it made a lot of sense as no-one knew about quark confinement in those days; and for all we knew there could have been quarks everywhere as a result of the high energy disruptive collisions occurring in air shower cores.
When the first paper was published showing four likely candidates; this was good science. It presented some interesting data with possibly spectacular conclusions – and said effectively “watch this space”. This was followed by a sensational paper (with Ian Cairns) showing a very impressive cloud chamber picture of nine parallel core tracks – one of which was apparently of lower ionisation and surrounded by normal neighbours. Again good science.
Unfortunately, Brian was seen to become increasingly arrogant in his presentation of these results and got a lot of people off-side accordingly. As more and more other experiments failed to produce any evidence of quarks, it was felt that the Sydney result was an unfortunate non-uniformity in the cloud density and the statistics were not as telling as originally thought because of the way the droplets are formed in the first place.
Brian regrettably saw his Nobel prize vanishing – and he was well and truly over the peak of his scientific career. What followed were excursions into Eastern religions (involving a claim about levitation – which made him somewhat of a laughing stock) and an interest in near-death experiences (because of the work of his second wife Cherie Sutherland).
He was soon to disappear down to Victoria and no longer kept in contact with the school. I never had the chance to say good-bye to him.
My personal interaction with him was always positive. He supported my research at all times and steered me to an early PhD. In fact he oversaw many cosmic ray theses as we all know; and I am sure we can remember the drafts coming back to us full of red pencil!
In the early heady days of First Year TV teaching, Brian and I put together a series on “Heat and Thermodynamics”. Our producer, Jock Millett It turn – was a very lively Scotsman with scant regard for copyright. Things soon became far more restrictive. It turned out that putting an entire lecture theatre in front of a box for an hour was not the best idea. Nevertheless, our lectures were well received as the “Brian and Lawrie” show. In that exercise I could see what a good teacher Brian really was.
We played many a squash game together and he was extremely competitive. He would stay in the centre of the court often blocking the view and way for his opponent, much to their exasperation. He was always a very keen member of the Physics team when we played against Chemistry.
More than anything else, my memories of Brian are a mixture of respect and sadness. For someone with so much to give, I think with much sadness of his later years.
Lawrie Peak
June 2015.
Laurie Wilson
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| 2025 |
My first encounter with the Physics School was in January 1963 when I attended one of Harry Messel's Science Schools (when Julius Sumner Miller made his first appearance). I started undergraduate Science in 1964 when one of our lecturers was a very young "Mr Peak". I finished up doing my PhD on the results of an electron/muon detector incorporated into the SUGAR array, finishing at the beginning of 1973. A couple of years were spent as a postdoctoral research assistant in the Atmospheric Physics Departmant at Oxford University before returning to Sydney, where I worked as a Senior Tutor with Ian Sefton in the First Year Lab.
I finally broke away from SU Physics in 1978 when I started work for the Ultrasonics Institute, which later became part of the CSIRO Radiophysics Division. Most of my research was in signal and image processing for medical ultrasound, but this soon diversified into a range of medical technology projects, finishing up working in Telehealth (where I was able to help bring some of the communications technology, developed for radio astronomy, into healthcare). I retired from full time work in 2008, but have continued some active academic work with honorary fellowships and adjunct professor positions at CSIRO, UTS and University of Western Sydney. And I have a lot more time to indulge my passion for photography.
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