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[00:00:02.08] DAME LEONIE: Well, Harry, we're here to talk about you and the University of
Sydney but also there are other things we can talk about. But we'll have to stay with that for today I
think. Now ,tell me, why did you leave Adelaide and why did you come to Sydney in the first place?
[00:00:19.13] HARRY MESSEL: When I came to Adelaide the first thing that I noticed was that the
research effort at University of Adelaide and generally from what I could see in other universities in
Australia, was very meagre. And the other thing which was quite outstanding was the fact that
students wished to carry on post graduate work would proceed overseas because of the lack or
shortage of research efforts within the country. So this meant that the very best of our Australian
students who wished to do post graduate degrees would proceed overseas to Oxford, Cambridge,
however you name it to the various, the very good institutions overseas because it was usually the
very best of the Australian students who wished to go on to do post graduate work. Now what then
happened was that of course the overseas countries which had trained them would then have the
choice of keeping the very best, offering them very good positions, and those which weren’t nearly
as good would perhaps come back through to Australia. Now I realised that this was an absolutely
untenable situation and that something had to be done in Australia so that we could train and retain
our own best students and inveigle some of our best young people who were overseas to return to
this country.
[00:02:09.17] Now to do that I realized you had to provide them with the research opportunities
similar to what they had overseas. Now if you’re going to have these research opportunities you had
to have money. I had been travelling a great deal overseas and I saw what was happening over there
the research facilities, the funds which were available philanthropically and from various
governmental agencies. I had become friendly with the premier of South Australia then Thomas
Playford, later to become Sir Thomas Playford, and I proposed to him that South Australia and the
University of Adelaide in particular should take the lead and set up an institute for advanced studies
similar to the lines of what they had at Princeton. You would bring together some of the very best
people from overseas especially former Australian scholars who were over there and had high
academic positions and you would provide them with funds to carry out research projects in
Australia and thereby you’d be able to train your own students. This captured the imagination of
Playford and it was arranged that I give an address, I think in the town hall of Adelaide. Now I
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should mention in this interview that as I get older I remember with increasing clarity the things of
my youth and I remember best probably many of things which never happened at all, so one has to
be careful on this. I’m recalling things of 50 and 60 years ago but I believe that my address was in
the town hall in Adelaide. I gave a speech and I made a proposal that we have an institute with
research facilities in Australia so that we could train and retain our own young people and get them
back from overseas.
[00:04:31.24] Sir Thomas Playford got up and seconded that and said that this was a very good idea
and that he would support it. The very next day -- I think it was in the Adelaide Advertiser, I think it
was on page 2 although again memory could be not serving me right – it then came out that the
Vice-Chancellor, A.P. Rowe, said that the University of Adelaide did not need more science and
engineering but what we required was more of the arts. At 10 o'clock that morning Playford phoned
me up and said Dr Messel... the South Australian Government was very happy to support this at the
University of Adelaide but if the University and the Vice-Chancellor doesn’t want it there’s nothing
more we can do.
[00:05:36.25] DAME LEONIE: Now, can you tell me what you knew about Sydney at that time?
[00:05:41.05] HARRY MESSEL: Well I knew that Sydney had very little going for it. I realised it
had gone through a rather turbulent time after the war, that it was without a head of the school here. I
actually visited the School of Physics, I had come here with Professor Bert Green who had the Chair
of Theoretical Physics at University of Adelaide. We visited Sydney and I remember we stayed at
the Southern Cross Hotel just across from Central Station. We paid a visit here and I was amazed
that there was no floor covering in the hallway here and that I tried to look in the basement but you
couldn’t go down there. There was water and you needed Wellington boots to be able to go down.
So that was my memory of Sydney.
[00:06:26.16] DAME LEONIE: Well that wasn’t a very attractive proposition it sounds to me, so
why did you carry on?
[00:06:32.16] HARRY MESSEL: Well, I’ll tell you what happened. That very same afternoon after
Playford phoned me up I requested to see the Vice-Chancellor which I did, went and saw the
secretary and I said I’m resigning! At that stage you’re well aware that you could get, become a
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professor just by knowing how to chew gum because it was after the war. I had various positions
offered to me, and with my recommendations from Erwin Schrödinger, the Nobel Laureate, I could
have got positions anywhere so I went in to resign.
[00:07:11.20] DAME LEONIE: Well that leads me to something else, you had all these
opportunities but why Sydney, because it happened very quickly didn’t it?
[00:07:20.06] HARRY MESSEL: Well, it happened by accident. Since I was resigning I was
immediately going overseas. I was going to be busy publishing a great number of scientific papers
there and in conjunction with my colleague Professor Bert Green. Then I was going to decide where
I would take a position, and all this happened very quickly in a matter of a day or two. I then had a
phone call, I think it was from Professor David Myers or whether it was Dr George Briggs from
CSIRO, head of the physical labs at CSIRO saying we hear you’re going overseas. I don’t know how
they could hear this so quickly but apparently they did. ‘Would you mind if we met you at the airport
and you came and had a discussion at the University of Sydney?’ I said no that’s fine. It was a few
days later when I was coming through, Professor Myers and Dr Briggs met me at the airport here in
Sydney and said, ‘The Vice Chancellor would like to have a discussion with you here at the
University of Sydney.’ So that’s how I happened to come here - I’d made no effort to want to see the
Vice Chancellor that time at all. I was happy as Larry to be going overseas and Playford was happy
to support me. University of Adelaide didn’t want any part of it, brother I didn’t worry, the world
was at my feet at that time.
[00:08:50.23] DAME LEONIE: Well I'd like to read you something that might interest you. When
the Vice-Chancellor of Sydney went to the Senate to confirm your appointment this is what he said.
“While the tribulations of the administration will probably be added to by this dynamic personality
the Department of Physics will gain increasing international reputation.” Did you know that that’s
what he said to the Senate?
[00:09:24.16] HARRY MESSEL: No, I had no idea, they were very kind to me here but... they then
discussed the possibility of me taking things over but I was only interested in taking things over... if
I could have the facilities for research here which allowed us to train and retain people here. I set
these outrageous conditions which you’re aware have never been equalled again at the University of
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Sydney or at any other university in the world as far as I’m aware. That I'd be allowed to make 14
permanent academic staff appointments and that I have research funding of a certain amount, that
my staff be allowed to go overseas at least once every two years etcetera. But of course I realized
that talk was cheap and you had to have money, and I had ideas how to do that.
[00:10:20.13] DAME LEONIE: You were rather lucky actually because you made so many demands
of the Senate and they acceded to them and I don’t think that’s ever happened since.
[00:10:29.13] HARRY MESSEL: I got the shock of my life, because I had written that letter with
those conditions and when I left Sydney I was absolutely certain that there was no way that the
Senate or the governing body of the University could accept such a thing. I was in Professor
(unclear-name) lab and in Milan at the time. I had been giving a seminar and the secretary walked in
and handed me a telegram. It was from the Registrar the University of Sydney saying that Senate has
accepted your conditions and you’re hereby appointed Head of the School of Physics 1st of
September 1952. Well suddenly my trip overseas from being a scientific lecture tour turned itself
into recruiting campaign and planning for establishing a first class school here in Sydney. That was
very exciting.
[00:11:31.08] DAME LEONIE: Well that was 1952. Now looking through your record from there I
was astonished to find out how much you did between 1952 and 1957 which some people think is
the end of the first phase of the Messel, the program. So what of those things do you think are
important between '52 and '57?
[00:11:54.19] HARRY MESSEL: Well one of important things was the support of the Vice-
Chancellor Stephen Roberts, who seemed to have a lot of faith in me and maybe he thought I could
drink scotch as well as he could which we used to enjoy at the odd time; and the support of the then
Chancellor, Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn, who I greatly admired and had great affection for.
That was point number one. Secondly was this idea that even though the University had just
completed its Centenary Appeal, which it had gone for a million pounds or whatever it was in those
days, only got 52 thousand pounds or something like that and that was for the School of Chemistry.
Even though that had happened, when I proposed that we established a foundation, at that time the
first foundation in the British commonwealth, Stephen Roberts and the Senate - God bless them how
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they did it - I don’t know, but they supported it and said yes. Now that was the fundamental
breakthrough here as far as the School of Physics was concerned, as far as I was concerned and that
was a breakthrough internationally as well for many universities because as you now know there are
tens of thousands of foundations not only in Australia but around the world – many of them
modelled on what happened in those early days. The fact that the University of Sydney had the
foresight or luck, call it what you like, to support what was then a very, very innovative idea for
Australian universities and to throw their support behind me even though they didn’t think it had any
chance of success.
[00:13:52.22] DAME LEONIE: The inaugural dinner of the Science Foundation must have been a
really important occasion for you.
[00:13:59.11] HARRY MESSEL: It was a very exciting one and very, very interesting. It was the
first time that a dinner was allowed to be held in the Great Hall of the University, 11th of March
1954. The night previously, I’d been invited to come and have a few cocktails with the Premier, the
Honourable Joe Cahill, and his cabinet ministers in Sydney. Being young and cocky I went up there
and had a couple of drinks and decided I’d leave. The Premier came to the door with me and said to
me, “Professor we appreciate very much what you’re doing for the country.” And a little gremlin got
into me, I don’t know where he came from and I said, “Mr Premier talk is cheap, and I turned around
and out I went.” The next day, the dinner was organised to be held in the Great Hall and one of my
dear friends long since departed, Joe Fallon, and some of his restaurateur friends went to the trouble
of organising this fabulous feast in the Great Hall. The Honourable Joe Cahill, the Premier, was to be
there; Bert Evatt, the Leader of the Opposition was there; Artie Fadden the Treasurer was there; Sir
Thomas Playford who had flown over from Adelaide he was there; and George Falkiner, Adolph
Basser. The various dignitaries, all the names are in a book that was just published about the
proceedings. We had speeches during the day, lectures on atomic energy during the day. In the
evening we met, I had Bert Evatt sitting on I think my left hand side and Thomas Playford on my
right, at the head table. At the front was Joe Cahill and over the opposite side in the Great Hall Artie
Fadden was sitting beside Frank Packer. The Chairman of the Foundation of the time was Dick
Parry-Okeden, the President of the Chamber of Manufacturers of New South Wales. The then
Secretary of the Chamber of Manufacturers was Ben Hall who acted as the early Secretary of the
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Foundation. It was a tremendous black tie affair. Georgie Falkiner, Adolph Basser was there, you
name it.
[00:17:08.22] The speeches went on and on and finally during that day it was announced that
Georgie Falkiner had decided to give 50 thousand pounds to the Foundation and that founded the
Falkiner Nuclear Laboratory here. Joe Cahill got up to give the major speech that evening and he had
his regalia on and he had a black vest and a big gold chain sitting around going in from left to right
and he got up and started making this really nice patriotic speech and I listened to it and right at the
very end he said, “You know, we Australian people, you know, do not only talk we do take action.
And it gives me great pleasure to announce the Government of New South Wales is going to make a
contribution of 50 thousand pounds.” Well the Great Hall erupted. It was just incredible. Georgie
Falkiner had decided to give 50 thousand pounds. Joe Cahill, the State of New South Wales had
decided to give 50 thousand pounds. On the opposite side of the room was Frankie Packer imbibing
with Sir Arthur Fadden and we could see Artie nodding off left and right. At about 2 o'clock in the
morning Artie Fadden gets up and says, “Even though I have no authority I’d like to make, say a few
words Mr. Chairman.” So Dick Parry Okeden says, “Alright, even though I have no authority to do
so, I undertake on behalf of the Commonwealth Government to equal the grant from New South
Wales.” You wouldn’t believe it. Menzies was sick in bed with the flu. Packer quick as a flash got
hold of his office. The next morning on all the placards was this amazing story about these grants.
Just wonderful! Imagine, 150 thousand pounds in one night in the Great Hall in 1954 that’s worth
millions, about 6 million or 7 million dollars today. But then Menzies got very angry and he accused
Messel of getting Artie Fadden drunk. The truth of the matter was I never even had the opportunity
to speak to Sir Arthur that evening and because he furthermore had been seated beside Sir Frank
Packer.
[00:20:16.00] Now Menzies from 1954 hardly had anything to do with me, would not even speak to
me and he used to tell the people, “Oh that scheister Messel got Fadden drunk and got his money.”
So finally Frank Packer took the bull by the horns and told Menzies that I’d never approached
Fadden, I never even spoke to Fadden and it was he who approached Fadden. Menzies turned up at
the inauguration and opening of the Mills Cross in 1964 with that million dollar grant for the
National Science Foundation, an absolutely beautiful story. Menzies was very nice to me after that.
We used to laugh, he'd pat me on the back in a fatherly sort of way and say, “Now, now Messel, you
know, I’m sorry about that I knew you didn’t do it etcetera.” So there was a fascinating story about
that dinner in the Great Hall, never to be forgotten, well and truly recorded in the written word too,
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every word is recorded there. As I mentioned then Playford had come up and then for the 10th
anniversary Playford came over again. I think the Duke of Edinburgh came over with the inaugural--
with the speaker at the 10th anniversary.
[00:21:32.20] DAME LEONIE: So, why did you, what did you do then, how did you, you
established the Foundation, then what happened?
[00:21:40.18] HARRY MESSEL: Well everything happened very, very quickly it was much to my
astonishment, I went around one of the first person I had interviewed for the foundation was then
Frank Packer, later to become Sir Frank Packer, he was up in, I remember going up in a small little
office in Castlereagh Street I think it was and I think Mr. Fairchild or Fairhall (?) was his secretary if
I remember correctly, been shown the small office and he was a kindly looking fellow but gruff and
said well Messel what do you want? And I said, gave him the little spiel that I felt was important that
we establish a foundation here at the University of Sydney so that we could have the necessary funds
to establish research projects which would then allow us to train and retain our own young
Australians and convince some of our best Australians to come back from overseas, so I carried on
this little spiel for about half an hour so he said well what do you want from me? I says your money
and he says how much? I said, I had to think, I forgot was, it's two thousand or whatever it was, four
thousand pounds and he says what do I get for it? I said, Frank I can give you an absolute guarantee,
he said what’s that? I said I can guarantee that you’ll get absolutely nothing, he says get out the
check will be in the mail, and so it was next day and that’s how Sir Frank Packer became the first
member of the first foundation in the British Commonwealth.
[00:23:30.11] DAME LEONIE: It sounds to me as though he wanted to get rid of you.
[00:23:34.05] HARRY MESSEL: I think he did, but he was very good. Years later, ge became the
Chairman of the Science Committee and used to have, lead some very good fights with Dick Winder
(?) and the Senate and the other Senate members. He was very good, he became Chairman of the
Science Committee and later became the Chairman of the Foundation and then after that I went and
got 50 thousand pounds from him as well, which was very good. He was abrupt but a wonderful
individual.
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[00:24:00.28] DAME LEONIE: Was that your approach to most of the people you wanted money
from?
[00:24:05.17] HARRY MESSEL: Yes, very, very, very direct and very honest, I mean one of the
things I did not do is promise them anything other than the training and retention of our students and
the possibility of bringing back staff from overseas. Now this was very important, when you make
requests such as that for funds you’ve got to produce and the reason the Foundation became so
successful is that we got results because very quickly I was able to get... invite and have accepted
some of the positions at the School of Physics, some very outstanding scientists from overseas and
very quickly we were able to build up our research efforts here in the school and very quickly build
up our graduates at the student levels.
[00:25:03.01] DAME LEONIE: That’s very interesting because you wouldn’t have imagined at that
time I would have thought that those people you were approaching for money were particularly
interested in physics.
[00:25:14.16] HARRY MESSEL: They certainly weren’t, they certainly were not. I don’t think that
when you give money philanthropically, this way, that you actually have to be particularly interested
in this for instance. If you give money for cancer research you don’t have to be interested in cancer
or for heart research. I think generally that’s why it's called philanthropy, you give it because you
think it's a good thing. And then once I got a few big names like Frank Packer in and Noel Foley
who was the head of British Tobacco and later became the head of Westpac and so forth, once I got
a few of those people in and George Falkiner of course, G.B.S Falkiner in... fantastic... and Adolph
Basser and all these other individuals then, then it became quite... quite easy to get other people and
eventually I built up the Foundation to being over 200 members. But there were some memorable
things and one of the interesting things was that Sir Thomas Playford never let us down. When they
had the inaugural meeting in the Great Hall at the University of Sydney on 11th of March, 1954 who
was sitting on my right hand side? Sir Thomas Playford and he said to me, Harry he says he wanted
to do it, the university didn’t but you’re doing the right thing. On the 10th anniversary of the
Foundation dinner in the Great Hall who was there again? Sir Thomas Playford, and by that time
he'd seen the great success which we'd had and how this idea had worked and he says that he had
been so sorry that Adelaide hadn’t done it.
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[00:26:51.18] DAME LEONIE: Well I think you must have given them some education because just
giving money so you can bring people in and out of the country and so on. I would have thought at
the time was not all that easy but you must have been teaching them something about physics and
why it mattered, and I’m saying that because I want to talk to you a little later about education.
[00:27:12.25] HARRY MESSEL: Yeah well at that time, at that time the thing that was really to the
fore was atomic energy and the atomic bomb was to be, was to be tested at Maralinga in South
Australia etcetera, and atomic energy the peaceful uses of atomic energy was very much to the fore.
Since I was a nuclear physicist myself I was very much impressed by this, not impressed by the
atomic bomb which I didn’t like being exploded in Australia at all, and which I opposed and became
a public enemy number one to a degree but I was very much for the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
In 1953 I gave lecture after lecture after lecture, hundreds of lectures from 1953 onwards on the
peaceful uses of atomic energy, and when our Foundation, the Science Foundation of Physics, was
founded in '54 it was known as the Nuclear Research Foundation, not the Science Foundation for
Physics, because at that time we were talking about the peaceful uses of atomic energy. I was very
much for it and I had very good connections with the peaceful uses of atomic energies overseas, with
the directors of research in the American Atomic Energy Commission, with the people in Great
Britain and so forth. I was gung-ho for the utilisation for atomic energy in those days. I might tell
you this much Dame Leonie Kramer, that I am today here it is at the end of 2008, and the silence
about atomic energy in Australia is deafening. We're talking about climate – the worry about carbon
dioxide and so forth and the things we should be using as atomic energy but we're not allowed to
mention it because it wasn’t politically correct. In fact it became so politically correct by 1964 we
had to change the name of the Nuclear Research Foundation to the Science Foundation for Physics,
otherwise nobody was even going to support it. That’s how taboo atomic energy became in
Australia.
[00:29:35.18] Now here I am at age 87, I’m going to make a prediction 50 years from now there will
be a lot of nuclear energy in Australia. It's bound to happen, you know, I mean just going on burning
coal and brown coal is not going to go on and I say that, you know, we made a great mistake but it's
politically incorrect, I’m not interested in making a lot of more enemies now - I made enough during
my lifetime. But atomic energy was a thing which I lectured on and many people, the businessmen
etcetera believed in it. For instance we went, attended two or three of the first conferences on the
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peaceful uses of atomic energy in Geneva and the Chairman of the Foundation etcetera Sir James
Kirby and Percy Yeomans and a group of these Foundation members actually came to Geneva and
attended those meetings in Geneva on atomic energy.
[00:30:35.11] DAME LEONIE: Well you were a pioneer obviously not in only that respect but in
other respects as well. Are you disappointed now at how it's all gone backwards?
[00:30:45.24] HARRY MESSEL: I'm sorry that Australia has gone backwards on this thing because
it's certainly gone forward in some ways in overseas. On the other hand I understand, what
happened, the reason I believe that we didn’t go ahead with an atomic energy future was because of
the explosion of the atomic bombs within Australia. The pubic was so abhorred and so turned
against it. That was an easy thing to sell the bad aspects of nuclear power rather than the peaceful
uses of nuclear power. It's my belief today: Australia is paying the penalty for those bomb
explosions in Australia in the '50s.
DAME LEONIE: What about Hiroshima?
[00:31:41.07] HARRY MESSEL: Well Hiroshima was a very sad date but if it hadn’t been for
Hiroshima I wouldn’t be sitting with you today because back in 1945 I just finished serving in the
European theatre and I marched in VE Day in London. I'd gone back to Canada prior to joining the
Canadian-American task force to jump on Tokyo New Year's Day 1946. I was on leave in Kingston,
Ontario at that time on August the 6th when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and 10
days later on Nagasaki. The moment that happened I realized the war was over and being young and
absolutely stunningly crazy, I wasn’t interested in staying in the armed forces unless I could fight.
I’m afraid we were trained and honed to be killers and unless you could carry out your profession at
that time you weren’t interested in going on. Terrible, terrible, terrible thing when you think of it
today in those terms but that was it and if I wasn’t going to be fighting again then I wanted out and
so within a matter of weeks I resigned my commission. I had graduated from Military College in
Kingston by the way so I could hold a commission for life unless I resigned and decided to go back
into university and learning which I dearly loved.
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[00:33:15.20] DAME LEONIE: Let me take you back to the '50s again just for a minute, There are
other things that happened there apart from the Foundation and the other things you described. What
about these other things, in that decade the fundraising started of course, theoretical research began
is that right, Science Schools, SILLIAC...?
HARRY MESSEL: Oh yeah.
DAME LEONIE: And then the, that there was the end of the early research program, now that’s an
extraordinary record.
[00:33:50.25] HARRY MESSEL: [Laughs] I look back at it right now and I can't believe it myself
Dame Leonie, I mean the question of the Science Schools, I very quickly became involved in the
question of the standards of education here. When I took over here at Sydney there wasn’t a single
girl's school in Sydney that offered physics to the girls. Now in those days students coming to the
University of Sydney if you wished to do pharmacy, medicine, engineering, science, a whole host of
these disciplines, physics was a prerequisite. So in those days a few of the young ladies would try
their hand at these disciplines and of course they had to do physics and of course the inevitable
would happen. They had no physics in school, they come in first year and they flounder and they
failed. And then I remember it was in first or second year of my stay here I failed 70% of the
students. There was an uproar beyond imagination, my life was threatened, demands were made, the
Senate should terminate my appointment here etcetera because the standards were not right. But the
Senate consisting of very wise people realized that they had signed a contract with me whereby it
wasn’t the Senate that had control of the standards in physics. They handed that to me and according
to my terms of my appointment. So the person who was able to determine the standards in physics
was Harry Messel.
[00:35:41.17] Now I wasn’t going to drop the standards and neither did I think it was fair for the
young ladies to fail but they had to come back in the summer and sit supplementary subjects. This
then lead to the Wyndham Scheme of science becoming a compulsory subject. It was me who was –
there was discussion with Harold Wyndham and the government people at that time who played a
major role in convincing the government that science should be made a compulsory subject for all,
for all the students from grade 6 onwards. So the young ladies coming to universities would have the
same opportunities as the males. People have forgotten that, they’ve forgotten how that actually
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happened but that is actually how this occurred. At that time I was concerned very much with the
question of standards, standards of the girls, standards of education what was being offered to them.
I thought the very first thing we could also do is to try to encourage these young students to come
forward in science was to try and help the teachers. The first Science Schools were held in 1958,
supported by Ampol Petroleum. They supported the whole thing and I had four of these Science
Schools for the science teachers. I felt this was very worthwhile, but the main people that concerned
me were the students. I felt there was so much emphasis in Australia on sport as there still is today.
You just look, just go and put on the television it's quite incredible on this. I love sport, too, but the
emphasis was on sport. So if you did well in school you wouldn’t hear about it. Although I saw in
the Herald this morning they did get a picture of a young lady who did very well in Abbottsleigh or
wherever she was. But in those days that certainly was not the case. So I felt it was very important
for us to be able to gather the very best students urgently throughout Australia, bring them together,
have them lectured to by some of the most outstanding scientists in the world, Nobel Laureates and
others, in order to let them know that we feel they are important. They are the future movers and
shakers in high society, that we think that they’re important, that we wish to honour them and to
make them feel and realise that we know that they are important to the community.
[00:38:27.23] So this whole concept of honouring excellence amongst the students and generally
within Australia was vexed at that time. And I might tell you, Dame Leonie, that at that stage the
mere mention of excellence would make people laugh at you. Many people would just tell me to get
out and don’t mention it, you’re a stupid old man or young man in those days [Laughs] when I
mentioned excellence. So that was the story there. Then there was the question of the computers,
that’s a very interesting one.
[00:39:02.17] DAME LEONIE: Well before you go onto that I just want to raise something because
I was going to ask you this anyway. Behind all this there was a philosophy of education and I
mention that because I think the first time I met you was in the '60s when I was at the University of
New South Wales and you invited me to lunch. I had no idea why and I didn’t know anything about
you but that was about education, so what was your philosophy at that time?
[00:39:29.17] HARRY MESSEL: Well I was a great believer in excellence, I just felt that education
– I believed then, and still believed now, of course – was the very basis of a progressive society. And
I felt it important, it was great to educate everyone to the maximum of his or her ability. I’m a great
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believer of that. But it's very important indeed, even more important that those at the very top, the
movers and shakers, be recognised and be encouraged. I’ve always been concerned with this. This
School of Physics, which we sit in at the present moment is, I said to many people, you have to be
good to get into this place. If you’re no good keep away from this place – we don’t want to see you,
we don’t want to hear from you. This school is for the best, only the very best. So I tried to bring
forward and give a challenge to our young people. And you may have heard me at some of the
Science Schools here when I’ve spoken to the students, I say to them you are sitting in a very
unusual School of Physics.
[00:40:37.24] DAME LEONIE: I think you’ve left something out that struck me about all this and
that is that you made physics exciting and that brings up people like Sumner Miller appealing to
people because he was interesting not just because he was excellent.
[00:40:53.18] HARRY MESSEL: Well I think yes, I think it's very important to make a subject
exciting and you can only be excited, make it exciting if you’re excited about it yourself and I
certainly was excited about physics then. I still am, and Julius Sumner Miller was par excellence, a
wonderful individual who really he stimulated the minds of so many people in this nation, young and
old. People to this day talk to me about him so it was important to make science exciting and
interesting. I think we've managed to do this for the young people. You can make it exciting too by
the nature of the scientific work you carry out here, the research projects which you carry out have to
be exciting in order to draw together some of the best brains in the country. For instance, right now
the School of Physics is competing with the life sciences. The life sciences are all gung-ho. I mean it
was... Genetics and all the other things in the life sciences draw the students in droves to them. We
still in physics are able to fill our doors, as you know, Dame Leonie. I mean this school is full at the
present time because the projects are exciting and the projects are exciting because the staff are
exciting.
[00:42:19.05] DAME LEONIE: Well now how did you go about recruiting the staff, did you have an
open go about this, did you have to go to the Senate, did you have to get permission, how did it
operate?
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[00:42:29.10] HARRY MESSEL: No, I... I pretty well had to decide what fields of research we
could work in. The important thing was this that I was not interested in competing with other
Australian universities on the quality of the research in the School of Physics, I was only interested
in competing on the world scale. I was only interested in competing with the very best just like Tiger
Woods. If he’s going to come and play golf in Australia next year he’s only interested in coming
here if he knows some of the best golfers in the world are going to be here. So the same went for the
School of Physics. I realized if we were to make a mark we had to be able to compete with the very
best overseas, to do that you had to have some of the very best staff. It meant that you had to have
research projects that could compete. Now this is a critical thing about the history of the school.
Why and how did I determine which fields of research we should tackle? Well I realized that we
certainly would never have the funds in my lifetime to compete with the big universities overseas
especially with the American ones, right, or the English ones. So we had to choose fields of research
in this country which would give us, which had an advantage over them. What would that advantage
be? Well here we were in the Southern Hemisphere, we had the Southern Hemisphere, the southern
skies, they had the northern one and they couldn’t see over it. So I decided that one of the things that
we could do was choose the field the cosmic radiation which I was working in and which we could
carry research here in the Southern Hemisphere which they couldn’t do in those days. Now times
have changed and people are doing research all around the world in South America and so forth but
in those days you couldn’t. Equally well was astronomy and of course in theoretical physics of
course it's a question of then just getting, convincing some of the best staff to come over here
because they could interact with the experiment, with the experimentalists. I was able to choose
fields here which gave us and had a natural geographical advantage. So it happened, it's exactly what
happened. We became leaders in our fields and as you know and you take astronomy Hanbury
Brown's intensity interferometer, we became world leaders in the field here in the Southern
Hemisphere. This attracted students and further staff so that was straight figuring out and I was
immensely pleased with that.
[00:45:28.20] DAME LEONIE: Well you really created a very large number of people who were not
in your particular part of physics as a discipline, that must have been quite difficult.
[00:45:38.17] HARRY MESSEL: It certainly was. One of the principles I worked on which always
amazes people that when I appointed a professor I didn’t use a traditional method of appointing
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someone who I felt I was better than he was. Any professor I appointed to the school had to be better
than me. I had to have a professor who I could look up to and regard as an expert and feel that he
was a leader, right? So the appointments which I made in physics here – you know, the Hanbury
Browns, the Bernie Mills, the Stuart Butlers – all these individuals I felt were better scientists than
myself, and I let them know that. I said, “You know, you guys are bloody better than me that’s why
I’m hiring you.” Not now. It's a tradition in this university, Dame Leonie, very often to appoint
someone that isn’t nearly as good as you so you could be the top dog. Now of course at that time
multi-professional departments weren’t known in this university, I was the one who broke through
on that long, long battle and that was a historic event in the history of University of Sydney and then
the history of academia in Australia when multi professorial departments became an accepted thing.
That battle was fought by Harry Messel, a very severe battle here at the University of Sydney.
[00:47:04.19] DAME LEONIE: Did you have any quarrels within the School within your way of
appointing staff?
[00:47:12.29] HARRY MESSEL: No, I had very few quarrels, we had a very, very, as far as I was
aware of course. I worked 24/7, you know, I very fortunately didn’t require much sleep and still
don’t. So I was able to leave about three lives while other people were leading about one. I used to
have a bedroom upstairs here and which I would quickly nap up to for an hour or two at night. The
rest of the time I would have a tape in my office and I’d work right around the clock. That’s been a
part in my life that I worked very long hours and not because I should, but because I loved it. It was
exciting, things were happening. You know, Cecil Green, our great benefactor said, “There’s nothing
in the world which gives one greater pleasure than accomplishment.” So I used to set myself these
little tasks to carry out which then when I succeeded I got a great deal of pleasure. Fortunately I was
able to succeed in many cases and in other cases I felt I lost, didn’t do so well. For instance on the
educational reforms, I had won the battle I was leading there for about 15 to 20 years. Then the
Teachers’ Federation managed to beat me and lower the standards so you only had to whistle to get
through the science courses and so forth. But normally I’d get great pleasure and I’d win. I did have
a good deal of discussion on one subject here in the school, which I didn’t have the whole support of
the school - that was computing. When I first proposed the idea of SILLIAC, I wanted SILLIAC of
course in order to carry out the calculations for cosmic ray fluctuations theory which I was working
on, and the theoretical aspects. Professor John Blatt who had come from the University of Illinois
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needed a computer as well. When I proposed that we have a digital computer here at the School of
Physics, many of the people opposed me; and one of the funniest things was the people who opposed
me originally are now its greatest users, the radio astronomers. [Laughs] On such a thing, many
people and even the scientific people back in the '50s didn’t believe in electronic computers on this,
it seemed strange that we talk about this today in such terms but that was an actual fact, so I had to
fight not only within my School I also had to fight in the public arena in relation to digital
computing.
[00:49:58.16] DAME LEONIE: Harry, tell us about SILLIAC.
[00:50:02.14] HARRY MESSEL: Yeah it's very good, very interesting story about SILLIAC. I’m
glad you asked me that question. It really started back at 5 Marion Square at the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Dublin where I was working for my PhD. [Name/Unclear], who was from
Hungary and later became the president of the Hungarian Academia of Sciences and then Professor
Erwin Schrödinger. I was working on cosmic ray fluctuation theory, very complex mathematic
problem. I had to carry out a whole series of calculations and in those days, this is going back to
1949, digital electronic computers weren’t the flavour of the month. As a PhD student I was
provided with a Marchant calculating machine. You’d press button and you’d have a carriage and
you’d push it over just like a typewriter and I would spend 8, 10, 12 hours a day carrying out these
numerical calculations by the tens of thousands, filling up volume after volume after volume of these
calculations and in order to get the necessary data for a scientific paper. In those days the professor
at the institute was Professor Brian McCusker and I was just a student. Later Brian McCusker
became the professor here of the Falkiner Department. The other student there at the time was
Professor Don Miller who was the Deputy Head of School here for many years later. I also had
another colleague Professor David Ritzen (?) who later on went to Stanford University and became a
full professor there and retired. They used to give me help with some of these calculations and
during that time it was shortly after the war, of course cheese was very scarce. Interesting story how
cheese comes into these calculations. You couldn’t get it, and I was a great lover of blue cheese and
Professor Ritzen was also a lover of blue cheese. I remember walking down the streets with
Professor Ritzen in Dublin and then at a window of these so-called delicatessens, lo and behold, we
saw a whole Gorgonzola cheese from Italy! Mind you a whole cheese. We're both at that time on
research studentships of 27 pounds a month – that was all the help we could get. So we took our
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money and put it together and we went and bought a whole Gorgonzola cheese. Now what do you do
with it? Of course we took it to the Institute of Advanced Studies up on the second floor and there
was a cupboard where we kept all the books with all our calculations and we stored it up there.
Professor McCusker and another professor there, Professor Pollack (?) would come there day after
day and they’d be sniffing along. During the course of the month eventually the cheese had got so
high they discovered it in the cupboard and I had to take it out. But the calculations had become
slightly odoriferous as well. When I came to Adelaide I continued publishing work with Professor
H.S. Green at the University of Adelaide, but then when I came to Sydney I was determined to carry
out one of the largest calculations, multi-[unclear] calculations, ever carried out and for that I needed
an electronic computer.
[00:54:05.25] They were just starting to come into vogue. There was already an electronic computer
across the road from physics here at CSIRO. Dr Taffy Bowen was the head of CSIRO in those days
and the computer was under him. In those days, early days when I hadn’t become a threat to anyone
and no one ever thought I was ever going to do anything other than blow bubbles, they were very,
very good to me. I became very friendly with Bowen. But he was having great trouble with his
computer, which was headed up by a fellow by the name of Pearcey, a very fine scientist, a nice
individual. They were having great trouble with that computer and it was eating up funds from
CSIRO. We couldn’t use it because the damn thing wouldn’t work most of the time. Taffy Bowen
was into using the funds at CSIRO for cloud seeding experiments; he did the early work in cloud
seeding in Australia. I needed a computer - his computer wouldn’t work. Taffy says, “I’ll support
you and help you to get a computer and that gets rid of my damn thing, we can get rid of it and then
I’ll have my money for cloud seeding. You’ll have your computer and everybody will be happy.” I
thought this was a great idea especially having the support of Taffy Bowen who was a very powerful
scientist in those days, and a very well known one. So we started making the right noises trying to
get a digital computer. At this stage I had appointed Professor John Blatt from the University of
Illinois as the theoretician in the School of Physics here. He was very well known in America, had a
very high reputation, had just published the book on theoretical nuclear physics with Professor
Victor Weisskopf at MIT, which became the standard book around the world nuclear physics and I
was very fortunate indeed to have, get him onto the staff of the School of Physics. He needed an
electronic computer as well. Now as the matter stood there was computer in England I think it was
called EDSAC, whatever it was, there was the computers at Los Alamos, which was being used for
designing the atomic bomb. There was a computer at the University of Illinois known as ILLIAC.
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The computer at Los Alamos was known as MANIAC, which had been used for the atomic bomb
calculations, the fellow who'd worked on that was a fellow by the name of Professor Ralph Meagher,
M-E-A-G-H-E-R. He'd gone to the University of Illinois and had built an advanced model of
MANIAC there and Blatt had started to use the computer at the University of Illinois in Meagher's
lab, so I had a very good connection with somebody who was in the computing game.
[00:57:39.04] At the same time I was a personal friend and a family friend with Dr Paul McDaniel,
then the director of research for the whole American Atomic Energy Commission. I used to have
some very good friends in my day on that, and they were providing the support for ILLIAC at the
University of Illinois, so I approached McDaniel and John Blatt. Mr Blatt approached Ralph
Meagher at Illinois with the idea that we get a blueprint of ILLIAC and construct a computer in
Australia. Well I was able to obtain the support and the go ahead from McDaniel, from the American
Atomic Energy Commission. I was rather close to them in those days because I was working on
nuclear power and supporting, trying to get nuclear energy in Australia and nuclear reactors back in
1953, '54, '55 as I mentioned earlier in my talk. My connections were very close in America, so close
that the Fort Foundation offered a nuclear reactor here at the University of Sydney free of charge
provided we could we get the running costs for it. That then lead to the establishment of the agency
which celebrated its 50th anniversary just one week ago and so forth, but we had very, very good
connections there. The Atomic Energy Commission gave permission, and the University of Illinois
also agreed that we could have blueprints on the basis that we then helped them redesign ILLIAC
and two more advanced version. So I then sent two staff members of staff from here, from the
School of Physics, Chris Wallace who’s now the late Chris Wallace, who became the first professor
of computing at Monash University. And Brian Swire, who later on became electrocuted here in the
School of Physics when a coin in his back pocket touched the big condenser bank and he was
electrocuted. They both went over there and they helped design the upgraded model of ILLIAC, so
we were being provided with the blueprints of ILLIAC free of charge - absolutely fantastic
generosity! One catch, Dame Leonie: computers cost money. Where was the money to come from?
Naturally what we would do is approached like everybody did, and like everybody got the same
answer from the federal government. So we sent the proposal through to them and the cabinet
minutes – which somebody has just seen in the last couple of years [mumbles] they’ve been
declassified – showed that they carried out examinations of proposal there in Treasury or wherever it
was, I’m not sure, that this computer idea was alright but it would be of no great use for anything
else. Perhaps for weather forecasting and therefore there was no basis for the government to support
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electronic computing. Can you bloody believe it? Can you believe it? You know, it's just unreal, just
unreal. I wouldn’t doubt it, young and crazy boy I’m here aged 30 that wasn’t going to stop me. I
then realized I had to obtain private funding so had to approach people who I was already
approaching to be members of the Science Foundation. Now a very good friend of mine who’s a
long since dead and gone, the Honourable AE Armstrong, later became a member of the Legislative
Council here in Winderdeen on the way through to Canberra. You used to pass it on the left hand
side along the main highway as you went along. He was very friendly with an Australian jeweller in
Sydney known as Saunders Jewellery and its owner was Adolph Basser. Now the Armstrongs knew
Adolph Basser well because Marjorie (the Armstrongs were very wealthy) used to buy her jewellery
from Basser. So it was then arranged that Marjory, Alec and myself have lunch with Adolph Basser.
Here's this wonderful, wonderful man, soft and gentle, I mean great race horse owner etcetera
coming and having lunch with us at the restaurant on Macquarie Street.
[01:02:40.28] A very elegant, beautiful lunch as I remember. There was Harry Messel selling the
whole idea and concept of an electronic computer to Adolph Basser the jeweller. The man listened
very carefully and closely and he said it sounds interesting. He said, “I don’t know anything about it,
it sounds interesting, I’ll think about it, [mumbles] support it.” He had a well-known son too, Adrian
Basser, who was a medical graduate I think from this university in those days. I think he’s dead and
gone too. One of the things trouble and given this history in fact everyone I mentioned is bloody
dead and gone. They all died young or something [Laugh] [Stutters] Anyway, I got the message
through Alec and Marjorie. A week later, Adolph would give us the 50 thousand pounds. How much
was the computer going to cost? 50 thousand pounds? Like all these scientific projects, you know,
you start off with the round number - crazy on such a thing. Lo and behold, he then won the
Melbourne Cup! The 50 thousand pounds from that cup he gave to us in order to build our electronic
computer here which we determined to call SILLIAC – ‘S’ for Sydney and 'ILLIAC' for the
University of Illinois. It was quite incredible. You can't imagine the joy, the excitement which I had
at that moment to suddenly have 50 thousand pounds from Adolph Basser for the computer.
[01:04:44.06] Of course we were then able to proceed with the plan for the computer. Things moved
ahead quickly, Swire and Wallace were over there and a year later they were back again to Australia
with the blueprints for the computer and we let a contract with Standard Telephones and Cables later
taken over by Alcatel here. Standard Telephones and Cables undertook that work and were able to
construct this computer here in 1956. When we had the first computing department within the
Australian universities and what a joyous time it was. Now the computer of course when we started
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constructing immediately cost more and more, like all scientific projects, always cost more than
what you think they’re going to cost. So we needed more money. The University of Sydney of
course in those days didn’t have that much money. Although they were able to pay you – pennies
and dimes, you know, sort of business – but not the tens of thousands and so forth. Lo and behold,
Adolph's horse won the Melbourne Cup the second time and we were then given the additional 50
thousand pounds! So that is how that computer came into being and then shortly after that, Taffy
Bowen was able to get rid of CSIRAC and that went through to Illinois. They were able to do instant
work in the early days on that machine and I think pieces of it are still there. So the question of
SILLIAC was very, very exciting. And then, I was able to carry out the various calculations of Dr
David Crawford and working with me were John Butcher and Bruce Charters. Lots of well-known
scientists were able to work with me and we carried out our giant calculations and published a 15-
hundred page book volume by Pergamon Press with all results. That was fine but very quickly the
rest of the School took up the computing game as well.
[01:07:17.10] Now, that by in the 1980s within about six years, the computer was no longer able to
carry out the workload which was required. The government soon learnt the value of the computer
and the Snowy Mountain Authority began using our computer Hudson. Tom Lang who was the
Deputy Commissioner became very friendly with us and they had their staff trained here on the
computers. I think one member from the Treasury, from the government came here. Vic Martin later
became the Head of the National Australia Bank was an early student. One of the people from
Veterinary Science who later became Head of Computing for CSIRO, his name was Peter, also used
to use it. It soon went through and of course we trained the head of every computing department of
every Australian university at that time. I was able then of course to attract some very good staff to
this and one of the first professor of computing was Professor John Bennett. I appointed him, he was
a researcher at the University of Cambridge and I was able to bring him over here as a Reader and
then later he became first professor of computing here. I kept the computing department within the
School of Physics, which was very strange. Normally the computing departments were within the
Mathematics Department or Engineering Departments. But since I’d founded it, the Computing
Department was in the School of Physics and I kept it here in the School of Physics for about 25
years. I think I’m the only professor in the history of the University of Sydney who has taken a
department, broken it off and given its own autonomy. Everybody else is busy trying to build up the
department to grab as much as they can. I had my plate so full I was very happy to put them aside
and put them on their own. They of course went from strength to strength and now they got their
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own building and so forth, so it was a very, very happy time. It's a great success story because we
trained so many people and so many tens of thousands of students in this game so the computing
story was great. We were then running out of space. We needed another computer. The technology
was going very fast and I realized I had to upgrade, I had to get another computer. I either had to get
something which was going to cost many millions more or hundreds of thousands more. I had the
support of the American ambassador on this and we were trying to raise the money and it was very
difficult. But one of my very dear friends just like a father and mother to me were Cecil and Ida
Green – two of the great philanthropists of America – later given an honorary knighthood by the
Queen, the founders of the Green College [unclear], the Green College, University of British
Colombia, the Green Hospital in [unclear], the University of Texas, Dallas and you name it, the
Stanford Green Library in Stanford and so forth, I was just like a son to them and I used to see a
great deal.
[01:10:45.17] And we would meet in various parts of the world. We would meet in Africa, we'd
meet in America, we'd meet in England while I was on the crusade to try and get the money to
upgrade SILLIAC to get another computer. When I was in London and Cecil and Ida Green were in
London the same time, the Chairman of the Foundation of that time was Sir Frank Packer. I don’t
remember if he was Sir at that time or not but he probably was. Frank was using what influence he
could with the government and so forth. Tell you the story about that later on. At the inaugural
dinner of the Foundation, he was trying to get the funds and I said, “Well, you know, I’ll see what I
can do overseas.” While overseas staying in London, I used to stay in very expensive places. You
don’t meet people in cheap places who were going to give you large sums of money. And the old
saying used to be Canada, “You can't sell mink in a backhouse.” So I was staying at The Savoy and,
lo and behold, Cecil and Ida were staying at The Savoy as well! And me being very brave but bloody
clever I invite Cecil and Ida for dinner at The Savoy. Wonderful smoked salmon, you know, all the
chicken Maryland and the rice and all the nice desserts and wine. And I’m just thinking, “Oh my
God, when I get the bill, what is Stevens Roberts going to say? I am in so much trouble!” We
finished dinner and I said to them, “Would you like to come up to my room and have a cognac?”
And Ida who was very fond of me, she’s like my mother, she said, “Yes, we would.” I thought,
“Jesus, here we go now, here goes the bill again.” You understand? So they came upstairs to my
room and sat down there. I’ll never forget it. I pressed the bell and the waiter came in, in this tails
and so forth, and says, “Yes, sir?” And I said, “We need three cognacs, please.” And he said, “What
kind?” And I forgot what it was, the Martells or...Martells Cordon Bleu or whatever it was. So they
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had that and then, and I said to Ida, “Would you like another one?” And she said, “Oh, yes, that'd be
very nice!” And I thought, Well this is it, you know, I’m going to get sacked at the University of
Sydney. Absolutely the University of Sydney is going to really raise the tops. So the next cognac
comes and then finally Ida turns to me and says, “Harry we'd like to do something for you.” She says
“What do you need most” I said a new computer. She looks at me and says, “Well, Cecil and I
would like you to have it.”
[01:14:00.24] I just about died. I just about died on the spot. I couldn’t believe it! He didn’t ask me
how much the bloody thing cost, he didn’t say a thing. He said we'd like you to have it. So I was
beside myself. So here it is the middle of the night, I think it's 3 o'clock in the morning and I phone
up Frank Packer at his home and wake him up. He says, “Who is it?” And I said, “It's Messel.” H
said, “What the hell do you want?” I said, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it!” He said, “What have you
done?” I said, “I’ve done it. I got the money for the computer.” He couldn’t believe it, I rang in the
middle of the night and there it was. We got the KDF9 which was then the replacement for SILLIAC
so that was then allowed us to carry on with the computing here, which I [unclear] through the IT
departments at the University of Sydney. So that was a very interesting story and of course as time
went on we trained more and more and more people. And then eventually I gave it its autonomy and
that went well. So that was a fascinating little bit of history in itself.
[01:15:23.10] DAME LEONIE: Well I suppose the basis of all this in a way was your ability to
recruit money not just people. Otherwise SILLIAC wouldn’t have happened, would it?
[01:15:35.16] HARRY MESSEL: The question of finances was absolutely critical and fundamental.
I wouldn’t have got the staff, I wouldn’t have had the research projects to carry out. Now how did
the question of the funding arise through the Nuclear Research Foundation? It started off when I
visited the University of Chicago in Illinois where Obama is these days by the way etcetera. I saw
how they were functioning and I became very friendly with some of the top people there -
mathematicians and physicists - and I saw how they were raising money. They had what was known
in those days as Chicago Research Associates, in which people would donate a certain sum of
money in order to be an associate. Purely an honorific sort of thinking and the money would go to
the University of Chicago for research projects. Now I felt one should set up a similar thing for the
Science Foundation; we'd have members and associate members etcetera and this thing, the only
thing which I could guarantee for them that they would get is the pleasure of knowing that they were
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training and retaining young Australians in carrying out top class research. Well that puts yourself in
a very difficult position, Dame Leonie, because it meant that you had to produce. Once you gave that
because you were giving them nothing in their hands, you know. A lunch or dinner once a year, you
know, really nothing. But what you could promise them were results for the nation. Surprising as it
may be, there are a lot of very patriotic people in Australia. Of course today with all the hundreds of
foundations – and I was responsible for a lot of these things – there’s so many people after this
philanthropy that I made a rod for my own back of course in that way, but there are people, a very
large number of people -- maybe not as many here as there is in America.
[01:17:39.04] DAME LEONIE: What other things in that period, in that decade, do you think were
important?
[01:17:47.25] HARRY MESSEL: Well in the '60s, ‘62 was the first international science school for
high school students. That was a major thing. Of all the things which I've done in my 56 years or 57
years at the University of Sydney, Bond University, I feel the thing that has the greatest impact
internationally and from a long-term point of view is the International Science School. Strange
people may wonder how it is I could say that – all the researching, all the computers, all the various
projects – but I think the impact of these International Science Schools is beyond comprehension, all
the time and continuance. I get spontaneous letters, then calls and so forth telling us how we have
changed the life of these people. One of the latest ones I never approached was the Chief Justice of
Australia has just been appointed Robert French. I suddenly hear Robert French was appointed as
Chief Justice and then comes out himself and says, you know, how he'd been a science scholar back
in '62 and '64, a lot of good stories came on about that. We have impacted around the world at a
very, very high level. That is why we’ve had the support of the President of the United States, the
Prime Minister of Japan, all the members of royal families, practically every prime minister of Great
Britain except Blair and so forth. People have realized the importance of really supporting the very
best of the best of the best because that is where the movers and shakers are and that’s what our
Science Schools are. So 1962 was the beginning of that, and here it is and coming onto 2009 and the
next Science Schools coming on, and the young people you’ll get will be just as incredible then as
they were then. As a matter of fact, I have to tell you Dame Leonie Kramer, I don’t know about you
but I find today that the smart students are smarter than they’ve ever been before and the dumb
students are dumber than they’ve ever been before. The gap seems to have widened just like in our
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economic life of a country. The gap between the rich and the poor has increased, the gap in
knowledge – because there’s so much more to learn of course that the poor ones haven’t got hope of
getting it at all; whereas the brilliant ones chew it up, there’s that great gap. But you see this
magnificent brilliance amongst the best of our students.
[01:20:38.10] DAME LEONIE: Well now, if you were still active what would you do about that? It
seems to be dreadful to have to say that there are dumber people and brighter people, this huge gap--
[01:20:46.26] HARRY MESSEL: Well I think you just remember to lift the level of the dumb ones
as high as you can but not fooling yourself that you’re going to get them that high. It's very unlikely
that he’s going to become the Chancellor of the University of Sydney or the Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Sydney. I think there’s a certain level and furthermore I don’t despair at people who
are not that clever. There are many tasks in our society that can be carried out by people who don’t
have to be geniuses. So all I really contend is that those individuals who might be able to put up a
ladder against a wall and knock on a few shingles aren’t the same as those people who are the
movers and shakers. And just having people that can knock on shingles in the community is not
going to get very far we have to have the movers and shakers, I believe that everybody should be
lifted to the maximum of his or her potential but being very critically aware that that level is very,
very different. And I decry this whole idea as we pass from the elitist through to the mass and now to
the universal system of education that we, in order to do that, we have automatically dumbed down.
This is completely against my grain. There’s dumbing down in society and I realise that this is a
consequence in our endeavour to answer the sort of question that you just asked: what do we do
about the dumb ones? Well, I don’t think that the answer there is to make the top ones as dumb as
the dumb ones. I think the thing is we have to do everything we can to lift the bottom ones but make
sure to keep the top still at a high level.
[01:22:41.22] DAME LEONIE: But doesn’t that mean teacher education?
[01:22:45.19] HARRY MESSEL: Oh very, very much so. I think the question of teacher education is
absolutely fundamental. The very best students, the really brilliant ones – the Bob Mays, the Rupert
McKellars – it doesn’t matter if you had a teacher or not. In my case, in school, which I loved, dearly
loved, before I went into the school room I already know, I read up and studied with great delight,
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the matter which I knew the teacher was going to be covering that day. I was able to, I had the
interest and love of knowledge myself so I could get along whether I had a teacher or not. The
teacher did help because they would answer questions. But for the vast majority of people I think the
question of teachers and leadership by the teachers is of critical importance, and whatever one does
one has to really concentrate on the teachers and to lift our levels.
[01:23:59.04] DAME LEONIE: I think you’ve got a new career coming up. You better start the
educational battle all over again about the training of teachers perhaps. I've got some general
questions I’d like to ask you but we're in the '60s, are there any other things there?
[01:24:16.18] HARRY MESSEL: Well I’m sure there are other things in this, in the '60s. In the '60s
I started working on the Science Schools, which were taking a great deal of time at that time because
at that time I was organising to bring in the President of the United States, bring in the royal family,
to bring in the Japanese Prime Minister. As you know I was busy fighting the Teacher's Federation
who were busy trying to dismantle the blue books and the Wyndham Scheme. In the '60s the
Wyndham Scheme came into force and I was delighted that the government accepted the fact that
science should be a compulsory subject. Now that’s an interesting story. They brought it in overnight
and then I forgot if it was 1964 or 1962 whenever it was, Jack Renshaw I think was the Premier at
that time. He called me into his office and said, “Messel, you bastard, you got us into this. You got
compulsory science, now you bloody well write the books.” Well I just about died. I had my bluff
called well and truly because I proposed that we give an integrated course of sciences to the students
integrating the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, geology and astronomy and knowing full well
that no such books has ever been written anywhere. So here I was faced with this enormous problem.
I was trying to produce textbooks for the schools for the compulsory sciences for the first four years
of high school and then the final four years. This then undertook was one of the most difficult and
most incredible jobs of my lifetime.
[01:26:28.25] DAME LEONIE: Well you had a team of people to write those books.
[01:26:31.23] HARRY MESSEL: Yes. Well I had a wonderful team of teachers, etcetera, who'd
write little bits. In those days I’d be going 24/7. But then I would have to rewrite the vast sections
and integrate the stuff. Somebody would write the stuff in chemistry, somebody would write the
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stuff in physics, somebody would write the stuff in geology, somebody would write the stuff in
biology and then I had to take and integrate that with other subjects. That was an enormously
difficult task and we worked delightfully. It was very exciting but it was very, very difficult. And as
you know, we produced those books and then they became the famous blue books in New South
Wales; and then they were adapted by the British for the high schools in Great Britain, and so forth.
That was the first integrated science course in the world but I spent a great deal of time in the '60s
defending the course which many of the teachers felt were too difficult for the students. Now we had
tailored that course in such a way that there were the blue books which of course we're attacked in
the newspapers all the time about being too heavy and hurting the book children's backs, giving them
back problems carrying the books back and forth to school. But those, the blue books were for the
advanced students. And then we had the two books that were slimmed down for the credit students -
they were the sand coloured ones. And then we had those slimmed down further, the two red
volumes, much thinner, for the slow learners. It was called the modified course for the bottom 25%
of the students.
[01:28:24.05] Now, as time went on the blue book became too difficult according to the educators.
The teachers for the best students then downgraded to the sand coloured one which was for the credit
students, which became too difficult; and then the red books which were meant for the modified and
the bottom 25% of the population became too difficult. I couldn’t believe it. If you ever want an
example of dumbing down this was it. We're back in the early '60s, our students were taught and
were very capable of comprehending most of the stuff which was in the giant blue books. By the '70s
even the material which had been prepared for the slow learners was too difficult for our best
according to [mumble] and then as you know we stopped publishing the bloody things.
[01:29:22.18] DAME LEONIE: Do you feel depressed about that? I mean all the work that went into
it and you’re now talking about dumbing down.
[01:29:29.14] HARRY MESSEL: That is the major battle, scientific battle of my lifetime,
educational battle of my lifetime, which I lost. When they say have you ever lost a battle? I sure did.
I lost it on this one because it was so exciting, so good and it was so wonderful to have young people
coming to the University so well prepared in the '60s. It was wonderful to see and the Federation
whittled it down and whittled it down. You might remember that I had the famous debate, I think it
was Van Davy who was the president of the Teacher's Federation of Australia. He had just come
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back from Moscow after spending 6 months or so over there. I had the debate in the University of
New South Wales, live for one hour on the ABC television on this point, and just on this thing, the
question of dumbing down, how they felt that these even red books were too difficult for the
students.
[01:30:26.11] DAME LEONIE: But this School is now still attracting very, very good students so
isn’t that the upbeat side of your story?
[01:30:35.13] HARRY MESSEL: Well I think what happened goes back to what I talked about with
you previously on this. The smart students are getting smarter and the blue books or red books or any
other kind of books, the smart ones are going to be smart. And with good leadership they can be
made even smarter. But the School at the present moment has never been in better hands. It has over
110 postgraduate students, all Federation Fellows and Professorial Fellows and Queen Elizabeth
Fellows. I’m absolutely thrilled, honoured and delighted beyond comprehension the way the School
of Physics has gone and I think it's a tribute to the Foundation. It's a tribute to the University that
they have supported us and you know this very well because you’re a Chancellor for a long time,
Dame Leonie. I was a person who didn’t stand on ceremony. I had to get things done and get things
done quickly and didn’t always fit into the way the University saw it. But they saw results and they
supported us, and that’s why the School is the way it is right now. It's one of the world leaders
because of the support by the University, the governing body and the rest of the people who've
given.
[01:31:58.05] DAME LEONIE: Let’s think about these summer schools, particularly. They were
televised weren’t they?
HARRY MESSEL: Yeah they’re started out that--
DAME LEONIE: And also that had an international aspect as well?
[01:32:13.18] HARRY MESSEL: Yeah, the Science School started, when television started.
Channel 9 had just started up and the Packers owned Channel 9 in those days. Bruce Gyngell, who is
now dead and gone, but his son is well-known in circles here was their main compere. Right at the
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very beginning it was decided to televise the Science Schools. The first ones were for the science
teachers and they used to be televised for one and a half hours in the morning and one and a half
hours in the afternoon live. Then they were shown throughout the 52 weeks of the year at 7am in
each of the capital cities throughout Australia, so the Science Schools and the lectures had a
tremendous distribution in those days. Channel 9 kept us up then with the science teachers and
eventually when it started with the science students. We started the science students in 1962. We had
the first four for the science teachers. In the early days, the science students – we had them from
New South Wales, two from New Zealand and students from each of the states in Australia. The
students in New South Wales were chosen by the Department of Education; the students in the
individual states were chosen by the Teacher's Federation. The School of Physics never, ever had
anything to do with the choice of students. We wouldn’t touch it because it could lead to a lot of
problems. So back in '62 we then started with the students. We thought it was important like I
mentioned previously that we honour the students and show them how important they were and we
exposed them to some of the most exciting lectures in the world. These programs were televised as
well, later on in the late '60s or '70s then the Channel 7 took it over and then Channel ABC took it
over for a while etcetera. By this stage of course the whole nature of communications was changing.
Computers were starting to come into their own, the desktop computers, the internet was starting to
come to its own and the young people were no longer just dazzled watching. The television screens
are in the bedrooms, they’re in their houses looking at the Internet. So the television programs
started to disappear then the lectures were webcast and they were able to look at that. And then in the
last two years in came the podcasts, and so it is now. Science Schools were so successful amongst
the young people that I felt it was a very good thing indeed to internationalise it, to try and get some
of the best students from overseas as well. So I decided to make an approach in the United States to
the President of the United States and to the Prime Minister of Japan through Monbusho, which was
their Ministry of Education in Tokyo. The Director of Monbusho was a former head of the
Kamikaze pilots and later became the president of the University of Tokyo and became a great
personal friend of mine. I just got a card from him yesterday on this. It was a very, very small world.
[01:36:07.00] I decided to try and bring in five or ten students from Japan and five or ten students as
well from England and five or ten from the United States. My connections in the United States were
very, very good because back in the mid-60s I was very closely connected with the American Space
Program, with the Atomic Energy Program. The National Science Foundation would have just given
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us a grant a few years previously, the million dollars for the Mills Cross, the largest grant they'd ever
made overseas at that time. My connections were very sound in the research field and the space field
and educational field, and I had ready access to the Office of Science and Technology at the White
House. I used to be able to tend it and I was in those days a very, very welcome visitor so I then
proposed that I think it was 1966 or '67 that we invite five students from America and they be known
as the U.S. President's Australian Science Scholars. David Hornig was then the Presidential Science
Advisor, the deputy was Professor David Robertson who I just spoke to the other day, he’s still alive.
I was able to get the story from him exactly what happened with President Johnson when the
proposal was put forward to him that five Presidential Science Scholars be appointed to come to
Australia to attend the International Science School which it would become. Apparently he gets a
briefing every morning abut just about a page or two with a couple lines on each topic and one of the
things he had on that line was on the question of the US President's Australian Science Scholars and
much to everybody’s amazement, he said yes and he ticked that. So that came through to the Office
of Science and Technology and Professor David Robertson who later became the President of the
University of New York, got hold of it and notified me. By this time I had already come back to
Australia. He said, “But the president wants you back again. He wants you to help him write the
speech. He’s coming to Australia and he would like to announce the program when he comes to
Australia.” I’d been home one day, so I get back on the plane again and I fly back to Washington and
I help craft the speech which Johnson gave here in Sydney. I had to then fly back to Sydney again as
soon as I finished that. I didn’t get on bloody Air Force One or anything else. I had to fly back again
and I very well remember being in my bed at French's Forest having done two world trips in about a
week, just back and forth, back and forth, absolutely totally exhausted. I was in bed and one of the
press phones me up, “Professor we know that you’re not on the invitation list to meet the president
of the United States,” I said, “Oh, no, they wouldn’t want me.” I helped write the bloody speech on
this and later had a letter, very lovely letter from Walt Rostel (?) thanking me for doing it. The
President then agreed to make the presentations of the awards himself at the White House on this
and President of the Science Foundation, I think maybe the Vice-Chancellor or someone from the
University of Sydney was with me. I think the pictures are in the book on this and we went and had
the presentations made at the White House. Glen Seaborg was there, George Miller of the Head of
the Moon Program was there, Seaborg was the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. A lot
of famous people were there. I shook hands with Johnson. He said, “Professor Harry, what would
you like me to do?” I said, “Mr. President, I say you see these people. I’d like you to send them to
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Australia to lecture at the Science School.” Now you wouldn’t believe it, he did and he send them all
here in Air Force Two and they landed at Sydney Airport. Here they bloody were and, you know,
you couldn’t actually believe. So here he was, Johnson, kept his word and sent these people up, there
was no turning back then. Then the British royal family became very much involved, the Prime
Minister of Japan became very much involved, and we had received his residence etcetera, and this
was all arranged through with [01:41:21.20] [unclear] who had this very interesting background. So
they were very, very exciting times but once that had happened then I decided to expand the thing
further and decided to bring in Singapore, to bring in Thailand into the fold and now of course we've
also got Malaysia and China and Japan. So the thing really became truly international and very, very
exciting. I don’t know of any other program in the educational sphere which has been known by
more leaders of the various nations than this one.
[01:42:14.04] DAME LEONIE: Lets move on to a couple of the accomplishments at the School
here. Perhaps we might start with the Mills Cross.
[01:42:22.12] HARRY MESSEL: Interesting story on the Mills Cross, how that came about. Now as
I had mentioned, I’m talking about SILLIAC. I became very friendly with Taffy Bowen, the head of
the Radio Astronomy and the head of the labs over here at CSIRO. They had their big dish at Parkes
and so forth and they were doing radio astronomy, but they had had their various ructions within
CSIRO between Bowen and at that time Christianson and Bernie Mills both outstanding world-class
scientists. Bernie Mills wanted to build what is now known as the famous Mill's Cross. Taffy Bowen
had the idea of doing the big parabolic dish at Parkes. I decided that Bernie's concept was a very
good one indeed and decided to support him. Bang! Messel becomes public enemy number one.
Suddenly a person who has to be opposed and kicked around by CSIRO at the [unclear] because I
was taking on a project which was going to compete scientifically with CSIRO. Now I might rapidly
say right now the collaboration between CSIRO and the School these days is very happy. They’re in
bed together, you know. You’re going back 46 years now and it certainly wasn’t that way when it
first happened. I became a very big enemy of CSIRO because I supported, decided to support Mills.
Mills just agreed to become a Professor here at the University of Sydney provided I could get
support for the Mills Cross. And then to add insult to injury, I decided to support Christenson to
become the Chair of Engineering at the University of Sydney and support him with his work. So
those were two nails put in the coffin as far, as I was concerned. I managed to clean out two of the
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top people at CSIRO much to the great benefit of the University of Sydney. Having said that, I then
had the terrific problem of trying to finance, get the necessary finance for the Mills Cross. Now I
always worked on the principle in the School and in the University and the Foundation that I always
make, be prepared to make a small investment of our own money to show it was in good faith in
order to draw the big one. I’ll be prepared to take 100 thousand dollars of the school and the
University's funds in order to attract a million dollars from the United States by putting this money
forward to try to inveigle them to support us. I did this with incredible success with the National
Science Foundation of America and the Mills Cross. Bernie had a scientific reputationm which he
had built up very well at CSIRO, world renowned etcetera. And him joining, agreeing to join my
staff then gave encouragement to the National Science Foundation in addition to the fact that we
were prepared to give our funds there as well. So cutting a long story short, the Prime Minister,
when was it, 1962 or '64 open, came to the opening of the Mills Cross at Molonglo and was a
tremendous success story. Professor Mills went from strength to strength in the staff and the place,
it's still going and right now. They’re doing fundamental work in relation to the giant array in which
people hope, might go out in Western Australia. So the Mills Cross Christenson story, it was a very
important one; and also then leads me to remark from the whole matter of funding from the United
States, when I left here retired from the Schools of Physics, I’d raised we'd reckoned those days the
equivalent of about 130 million dollars in 1987 funds. I don’t know what the hell that’s worth today,
lose all track of the inflation factors on such a thing, but I'd raised about 130 million.
[01:47:44.29] Now, the vast majority of that didn’t come from Australia, it came from overseas,
using the technique which I just had explained of using a spry to catch a mackerel – always showing
in good faith that we were prepared to put up our own money first. Providing you would help us so
we had raised multimillions of dollars from the Office of Naval Research and the American Air
force, AFOSR, in Washington and a million from the National Science Foundation. So we raised
multimillions of dollars from the United States to support our research here, The University of
Sydney could never have done this by itself but all the time the upper echelons in this University,
whether through good will or good sense supported me, while everybody else in the bloody
community was trying to shoot me down. I bear no ire about this at all, when you’re going to the top.
Here was a competitor, here was a competitor to the scientific scene in Australia, so here was this
young Canadian whipper snapper. What was he doing here in our country? Why didn’t he go home?
I looked at the opening of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of AINSE just a week ago
yesterday, had an article, newspaper article, in 1953 where Arthur Calwell was attacking me and
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telling me to mind my own business because he had other advisors and supporters elsewhere in
Canberra. He didn’t need this Canadian professor who didn’t know anything but... It's wonderful. I
just love reading it, you know. It’s just so good, but I think this sort of opposition is a very healthy
thing for you. You may think it's bad. I don’t – all it did was make me stronger. It made me compete
more, made me determined more than ever that I had to succeed. The interesting thing about this as
well you had to succeed. If you failed once they had you. If I had failed to get that computer I was
dead. If I failed to get the million for the Mills Cross I was dead. If I failed to get the money for the
intensity interferometer for Hanbury Brown I was dead. Each time it was all or nothing at all, and
that made it all the more important that I win and I did.
[01:50:35.07] DAME LEONIE: A person who doesn’t know what the Mills Cross really represents,
could you tell us about that?
[01:50:41.04] HARRY MESSEL: Yes, well in the early 1960s the flavour of the month in the
astronomical field was radio astronomy. Up until this time, or up to about that time when one talked
of astronomy when all we thought well one looking up there and looking at the stars or looking at
the, studying the stars and the various galaxies and so forth through telescopes and what they were
measuring was light and pictures and views of these various celestial bodies. Now people from Bell
Telephone in the 1960s or earlier and the people at the University of Adelaide discovered about that
time there were signals, radio signals coming from space and that you could study these various
bodies throughout the universe not just by the light that they emitted but also by the radio
frequencies which they gave out right. So up at that time then the whole field of radio astronomy
was born and both in England, in America and in Australia etcetera. Various large, very large and
expensive instruments were constructing, were studying via the universe through radio frequencies
rather than through visual light. So it was quite fundamental, very important and still is. Do we
know? Do we have all the answers today looking back at it? Here I am, sitting in front of you, aged
87, I feel even though I’ve gained a lot of knowledge in the astronomical field in the last 50 or 60
years I’m still very ignorant. And so is the whole scientific community. I think that we are at a stage
in astronomy, radio astronomy, optical astronomy where there, we simply haven’t got all the
answers and we're coming up with some very strange solutions. The study and going on to ever more
complex and giant instruments continues and that’s why there’s the big study just been completed
now with the construction of the giant kilometre array, which people are hoping they’re going to
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build in West Australia, which is an international effort. But the whole question of radio astronomy
is wide open. Very, very important and now about the intent of the interferometer, that is another
way of studying these celestial bodies. It is determined by measurements which are carried out on
the basis of the interactions of light particles. This was first proposed by Professor Hanbury Brown
in Manchester and elucidated by him and Professor Richard Twist who is now dead, and Hanbury's
now unfortunately dead. The whole idea that you could carry out measurements of correlations of
the light signals coming from these various celestial bodies which lead to the concept of the intensity
interferometer which was eventually built at Narrabri. Now I’ve got to go back for a very interesting
story here. When I first came to Sydney a very famous professor who was then president of the
Royal Society P.M.S Blackett visited us in my office and said, “Messel what are you doing wasting
your time trying to do research in Australia when you know very well that we can carry it out far
better in England?” I say, “Yes, sir.” Him unknowing at the time that I just hired secretly unknown
to him his entire bloody staff. That was Hanbury Brown and John Davies, Allen, the whole lot had
already agreed and had signed up with me to come to Sydney and here was this fellow thinking with
his staff that telling me to leave it to England. Wonderful story. True, it should go down in history on
this, you know. Leave it to me we can do it better than you and here I’d hired those guys and of
course they came over here and did a marvellous job.
[01:56:17.20] So a further story about the intensity interferometer, again it was a matter of getting
funds, always. When you’re doing research, it's still the same the world over today, doesn’t matter
where you are whether it's in the Space Program, the Atomic Energy Program, you name it we're
always fighting for funds. It really sharpens your wits after a while and your technique. Again I had
to use a method of using a spry to catch a mackerel and I had to catch a mackerel in various places. I
had to catch, throw the spry in America and try to get support there, I had to throw out a spry to
England and the funniest thing I had hired Hanbury and yet I was able to get support from the UK
with the construction of this. Later I was using the Pollock funds here at the School of Physics as a
spry and finally I was about a half a million dollars short to build a new interferometer. Barry Jones
was then the Minister and Max Brennan was still on the staff of the School here if I remember
correctly. I decided that I’d go and see Barry Jones in Canberra and Max said, “You’re wasting your
bloody time, you know. You’re wasting your bloody time. You’re not going to get anything there,
you know. We've tried all this, we've tried all this.” I said, “Well, just one more try. Let's see this.”
So I went to see Barry, who’s a very intelligent man, highly intellectual, explain to him what we're
trying to do, explain to him that the funds we'd raised. And then said, “What have you done for
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science? You’ve done bugger all. Here’s a chance for you to do something worthwhile. Here’s a
chance for you to support a project of world renowned, of international importance.” Barry’s a very
intelligent man he saw it and of course he supported it. We got the new interferometer. So this was a
fascinating story and in this case, the government came good. Other cases the government doesn’t
come good. Now during the '60s when I talked to you about the Mills Cross, the interferometer and
so forth and the International Science Schools, my connections in the United States played a very
important role. I was very closely associated with the American Space Program people. Wernher von
Braun became a family friend of ours and we used to see him all the time. George Mueller, in charge
of the space program, the moon program, the Luna program was a great, became a great friend of
ours. We knew all the people who were the movers and shakers at that time. At the same time I then
became the Joint Director of the Cornell Sydney University Astronomy Centre. Imagine we set up a
Joint Astronomy Centre back in the '60s. Today they’d kill for such a thing, but in those days we set
it up and I was the joint director of the giant one thousand foot radio astronomical telescope in
Arecibo, Puerto Rico along with Professor Gold. We had dozens of connections in the United States
and very closely associated with the space program as well. At the time my first PhD student here
was a fellow by the name of Brian O'Brien. He’s back in Australia here fighting a climate controls
and stuff, climate change and stuff of this nature. He was my first PhD student. His thesis is up in the
cupboard here at the present time. I remember him bringing it down to me just before one Christmas
and I looked at it and the English was so horrible I made him take it back and made him rewrite the
whole thesis, which he did and did very well. He became one of the first professors of Space
Sciences at Rice University in United States, and then became very closely associated with the moon
shot. He was one of the people chosen to put up a package on the moon and [unclear] shot up there
from... from Rice University. In doing so, naturally he was very closely associated with Lockheed
Electronics which was of course doing a lot of the technology and a lot of the instrumentation for the
moon show.
[02:01:07.13] So he had close connections with them and through Brian and through my association
Wernher von Braun and George Mueller the head of the space program I became involved with
Lockheed Electronics. At that time I was also visiting Alaska - talk about leading three and four lives
- and became very concerned about the fact that the polar bears were disappearing in Alaska. The
idea was then proposed that of course the satellites are soon going to be going up and you should be
able to track polar bears with satellites. Well, heavens above, I had the ringside seat because here my
best mates were people who were running the satellites and putting these things up and also they
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were closely associated with the people who were developing the technology. So it was decided that
we would try and track polar bears in the Arctic using the satellite and that the instrumentation for
this would be designed in America. So for two years I worked up on the Arctic on this, anesthetizing
polar bears and measuring them and getting ready to put the radio transmitters on them. You may
have seen on the program on the ABC the other day these guys are rediscovering the bloody archives
on this 40 years ago. Only difference was theirs worked mine didn’t [laughs]. After two years the
company decided they had perfected the instrumentation. We were out in the Arctic and we
anaesthesised the polar bears from a helicopter and so forth and of course the thing didn’t work. It
was grounded so the president and the vice president of the company then met me at the Imperial
Hotel in Vienna on my way back from the Arctic. I was coming, going through that way and they
were deathly frightened that University of Sydney would be suing them for breach of contract. Of
course in those days, Dame Leonie, the University never used to sue anybody. I never told them that.
I told them what a great inconvenience it was. But cut a long story short about a year later we got a
nice big cheque at the University of Sydney here for all the trouble and expense we'd gone through/
They were sorry that they were unable to fulfil the contract because the technology wasn’t
sufficiently advanced to do so. So it wasn’t their fault, it was something not possible to do what
they’d undertaken. This then led to me establishing the radio tracking laboratory here at the School
of Physics which went on for many years, which then led on to the radio tracking devices for the
automobiles in Australia which then led to the young people here getting some very handsome
money for developing the technology here.
[02:04:01.18] So we did some very interesting things with the technology. We used to have the
police come in here during the middle of the night, unbeknown to everybody else, and we were able
to do some very fine tracking, make some very big drug catches using this technology. Now this
technology is used on the crocodiles and birds and everything but we were pioneers. There were
very interesting stories therein as well but our connections with the space program were very
important because then as George Mueller came out to Australia, Sheppard, one of the first
astronauts came out to Australia, Wernher von Braun came out to Australia. Glenn Seaborg as I said
came out to Australia. We had very, very happy and close association with our colleagues in the
United States, it was very exciting.
[02:04:56.06] DAME LEONIE: Well what about some crocodiles for a change?
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HARRY MESSEL: Yeah, well the crocodiles were very interesting, I got led into the crocodiles via
the American space program and the fact that the transmitters had failed on the polar bears up in
Alaska at Point Barrel back in the mid-60s and determined then to try and develop the technology
here. When I decided to develop the technology for radio tracking, or to try and develop it, here I
understood that I would need an animal which was environmentally difficult, which put extreme
pressure environmentally on any of the scientific instrumentation you had. The species which I felt
provided that in Australia because I didn’t want to go up to the Arctic again - I’d frozen my ass off
enough on being born and brought up in Manitoba I had enough of that. I thought we should do this
in Australia, and the species which would be very environmentally difficult was the saltwater
crocodile. At this stage in the late '60s I don’t think I’d ever seen a crocodile other than at the zoo.
So in the late '60s, early 1970s, I decided to carry out an expedition to Northern Australia to see
whether I could do some preliminary studies on it. The first thing I did discover was that I couldn’t
get around. There was practically no, there were no detailed maps to the rivers. There was no tidal
information which rivers you could get into. There were no tidal charts, no anything. And the thing I
also discovered was there were practically no crocodiles. Now being a very stubborn individual, I
felt that I should try to rectify this situation. That was then the beginning of a 17 year study: the
largest of its kind in the wildlife world to map and charter the 100 tidal river systems in Northern
Australia – to study its vegetation and its crocodile populations thereby elucidating the population
dynamics of the species because very little next to nothing was known about that. If I was able to do
that then I would be able to make an impact on the saving of the crocodilians here and many other
countries of the world – the 25 or so other crocodilian species around the world – which equally
were in great difficulty. So I then started this incredibly difficult program. The University of Sydney,
God bless them, supported me to the hilt. Very strange it was: there I was a professor of physics,
going out and studying rivers and its vegetation, and studying the population dynamics of crocodiles.
But I was aware that it didn’t really matter whether it was crocodiles or physics I was doing, because
I had a former young student here by the name of Bob May who had come back to me from Harvard.
He had just received a personal chair in theoretical physics here in the School and was taken to
playing a lot of bridge at lunchtime with Professor Butler and the other theoreticians upstairs and not
doing theoretical physics. Brilliant young man! So I called him down one day and I said, ‘Bob,
you’re obviously determined to become the number one bridge player in Australia - by the way,
which he just about was 'cause he was going to be in the national championship team rather than
doing theoretical physics. I say, ‘Why don’t you do something which captures your imagination with
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all the wonderful mathematics you have? Why don’t you go into biology? Mind you this was just
'70, '71 just when I’m starting my program. ‘Right oh,’ he says, ‘Professor, I wouldn’t know the
difference between a frog and a toad.’ I said, ‘Bob, you don’t have to. You’re so damn smart, you
could, with your mathematics, become very famous very quickly because many of these biologists
don’t have the mathematics that you have.’ Well away he went. About a year later, about '72, Rita
comes in, my secretary and says, ‘Bob is here to see you.’ Professor May sat down - he’s always
very nonchalant, offhanded - and he said, ‘Look, I’ve just been offered the chair of biology at, where
was it, New South Wales, what should I do?’ I said, ‘Forget it. No use you going to New South
Wales you’ve got a bloody chair at Sydney. Don’t be funny. Which university do you think is
better?’ [laugh] Then to cut a long story short, I think he had the chair offered to him at ANU. He
then had another chair offered to him here in Sydney [unclear] and this time he'd come just like a
fatherly way to come and see me out of due respect, One day he came in, I think it was 1972, he
threw this on the table in front of me. He said, ‘Now what do you think of this?’ Here it was offering
him the Chairmanship of the Biology Department at Princeton. Professor I think was Macarthur had
just died of brain tumour there and here they were offering our professor of Theoretical Physics at
Sydney the Chairmanship of the Biology Department at Princeton University. I said, ‘Bob, get out of
here and pack your bags and get over there!’ - which he did, and very quickly. You know, he became
the Vice President of Research at Princeton; then went over to England and became the Chief
Scientific Advisor for the British government; became the President of the Royal Society; and then
was made a Lord in the House of Lords.
[02:11:42.05] Now here was a theoretical physicist going into biology, so the fact that I was going
into biology, it really wasn’t that significant and the University of Sydney in all its wisdom and
being the great academic institution it is was well aware of such thing as crossing these boundary
lines was perfectly alright. In fact it should be supported and encouraged. So I was able to cross that
boundary line and then I undertook this very difficult - it was very trying and very difficult. It took
17 years. It was difficult physically and it was difficult scientifically. I was able to elucidate the
population dynamics of the saltwater crocodile. It then became the basis of saving the various
crocodilians around the world and I then became the Chairman of the Crocodile Specialist Group. I
became the Senior Vice Chairman of the World Species Commission for all species that lead from
this. So it was a very exciting time and it was nice to see. For instance in the School at the present
moment, we've got medical physics now, biological stuff, more. I was able to tell in those very early
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days, 37 years ago, that crossing these boundaries from one field to another's very healthy because
you bring in a different perspective. So it paid great dividends.
[02:13:10.22] DAME LEONIE: You’ve used the words social relevance quite a lot in what you, not
today necessarily but in other places, to the people who funded you in the way that you’ve described.
Those various examples of huge generosity, do you really think they all understood that there these
were socially relevant programs that you were mounting?
[02:13:35.01] HARRY MESSEL: I think yes and no, I think they liked the program, I think they
enjoyed the enthusiasm, which I showed for them and it was true enthusiasm. They could feel that I
wasn’t just acting. I believed. I firmly believed and honestly believed what I was saying was right
and that I felt they were very important because I could see the advances, which could be made. And
I think I was able to convince them. They themselves may not be convinced but they had seen the
examples of the things which I promised that we could do, we could do because very quickly as you
know we became the centre in Australia for graduate students. Students wanting to come and do
graduate work in physics, where did they come to? They'd come to the School here even though
they’d have to redo our courses, They’d come from other universities: Queensland’s, there’s
Melbourne and elsewhere and they used to come to the School of Physics here. And the fact is that
they were able to attract them; and the other thing which did it was the quality of the staff. May I say
the tremendous importance of the quality of the staff you have? This school, at the present moment
as it stands, is able to attract the 110 postgraduate students because of the quality of the staff. The 6
Federation Fellows, the 6 Queen Elizabeth Fellows, the 6 [mumble] fellows. It is able to attract the
best students from around the country and many from overseas because of the quality of the staff
you have. I stressed before in my discussion with you that I tried to insist that the people I had were
better than myself. I was a firm believer in the quality of the staff and the quality of the teachers in
the School to really provide inspiration and leadership to the kids. You’ve got to believe in what
you’re doing. You’ve got to be good at what you’re doing.
[02:15:25.06] DAME LEONIE: Well now let's talk about solar energy, tell us about it.
[02:15:33.13] HARRY MESSEL: I felt that I should do something which I felt was of tremendous
importance to Australia and that was in the energy field. I decided to start phasing out from the
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environmental field in Northern Australia and from the radio tracking devices, which were very
successful too. Eventually...[unclear] of all this tremendous technology which went worldwide I
decided we should do something of importance in the energy field. I stuck along with other people
solar energy, so I then established a solar energy laboratory here in the School of Physics. The
University of Sydney was very supportive of this technology and this latest development in science
and provided a special developmental grant here for three years in which I was able to hire staff and
get students. I got some very brilliant young men involved and by 1976 we had made an important
breakthrough in the technology by developing special selective services for absorbing the sun's rays.
The University then was able to take a patent of this and this thing then looked as if it had
considerable hope for meeting some of our energy requirements in this country. It had the necessary
technological development. The University had provided the original funds but I knew it was only
for three years. We were making applications for grants from the Energy Research Council - I think
it was called in those days 31 or 32 years ago, the name's changed - and we had small grants of 10
and 20 thousand dollars and so forth. But we were running out of money. Towards the end of 1976
we'd made this breakthrough. I realized I had to do something desperate to get funds otherwise the
laboratory was going to be closed down. In that laboratory by the way, was young David McKenzie
who was gung-ho and the person you keep reading about and seeing on television everyday with the
big solar energy development in America, in California and Australia. He was the young man which
I brought here from the University of New South Wales and I originally hired him on the staff in the
70s and he was with me right until I retired. He was one of our young prodigies and I’m very, very
proud to see how well he went. But I had to do something with the funds. At this time when this
major breakthrough was made, we tried to get some publicity for its importance in Australia in order
to get further funding for it. I remember with a great deal of effort, the group managed to get about 3
inches of space and about page 22 of the Sydney Morning Herald which annoyed me. I said, ‘Look
let’s have the press release. I’m going overseas and just let me use my connections.’ Let me tell you,
they were mighty good over there and see what I can do. So I went to overseas again and used the
principle you can't sell mink in a backhouse I took out on the last night I was in London, my dear
friend Chapman Pincher who was a top reporter of the Daily Express and had won all those awards.
He’s still alive right [unclear/mumble] and was a wonderful correspondent. I took him and his wife
Billie up to dinner to Parkes which in those days I forgot was worth about 40 or 50 pounds per head,
cost a lot of money. We imbibed in good wine and enjoyed a wonderful meal and about 9:30 in the
evening it was good [unclear] accents, ‘Well son, what have you got for me now? Have you got
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anything new?’ I said to Chapman, ‘As a matter of fact I have.’ And I pulled out of my breast pocket
the press release which we were going to give in Sydney which had no information at all. ‘My God,
this is fantastic.’ He said ‘Can I use it?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sure you can.’ At this time you can
remember this is '76. It's the great power shortage in America. Right around the world the big freeze
up in New York, power shortages, everything. He says, ‘Where are you going to be tomorrow son?’
I said, ‘I’ll be in The Pierre Restaurant on 5th Avenue.’ Again following my principle. He said,
‘Alright.’ So next morning, the wife and I get on. We fly to New York and we arrive at The Pierre
Hotel on 5th avenue, the bubbliest crowd of people milling around with all these crazy machines on
their back, with television guys and crews holding things around. I said to the wife, ‘This place is
crazy. We shouldn’t be staying here, probably full of these movies actors from Hollywood.’ So
anyway I managed to get my way, fight my way through to the registration desk and I said,
‘Reservation for Harry Messel.’ ‘Oh my God you’re here! You’re here, thank God you’re here! All
these people are just waiting for you.’ I just about died. Chapman Pincher that next morning had
made the front page headlines in the Daily Express about this great solar energy breakthrough. It had
hit America of course right at the very height of their big energy crisis, so all these people were there
to interview me. About two hours later and after dozens of interviews I wasn’t short of words or
praise on this, I came up to my room and I remember at The Pierre they have this beautiful ancient
looking desk with curved legs and inlays on it. At the end there was a silver platter and there was a
letter in there, ‘University of Sydney’ on the left hand edge it says ‘Acting Vice Chancellor Bill
O'Neil.’
[02:22:44.22] So I felt funny in my stomach. This worries me when I see letters from the Vice
Chancellor for me at The Pierre so I opened it and it says: Dear Professor Messel, According to the
terms here at the University Research Grant I’m sorry to have to inform you that your grant for solar
energy is hereby terminated and it will cease on the 31st of December. I just about died just about
fainted. Here I was making all these things, all these announcements and here was the solar energy
being terminated. I just about died, couldn’t believe it. The hullabaloo continued here in Sydney. If
course they'd picked up the media here and there were banner headlines in the Sydney Morning
Herald and in the Australian press. I got back here to the School about a week later, very excited
about all the interest I had spurred, got in relation to this and I immediately went upstairs and saw
the boys who were looking after this and I said, ‘What about news?’ And they said, ‘You’ve driven
us crazy here. Look at this!’ You’ve never seen such a stack of telegrams, all about this stuff. What
have you done?’ I said, ‘Well is there anything interesting?’ He said, ‘There’s one here from the
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Foreign Affairs. It says they have been approached by high Saudi Arabian sources and wanted to
know whether you needed any funding, strings attached or unattached. DFAT. I said, ‘Did you
answer?’ ‘Oh, no, didn’t bother with that.’ I said, ‘Give it to me.’ I took it and I ran downstairs to my
office and got on the phone to DFAT and said, ‘Are we interested? We're desperate. We certainly are
very interested to have funding - strings attached or unattached.’ I had to wait, I didn’t know who it
was, who it was at that stage. At the same time I had a research in the north, I was carrying out my
research there. We had the research vessel, which was costing us two thousand dollars a day to run.
You weren’t going to allow that to be just sitting around. I had to get back there and to Darwin and
to head the thing up. So I went up to the north and I was up there about a week and then I had a
message from my office. I had great communication system straight from my office here straight to
the ship, straight to the airplane, straight to the work boat. They had the marvellous communication
system which worked like a charm during the cyclone in Darwin too. That was one of the methods
of communications [mumble], and the Premier said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Well you
know what I’m doing. I’m doing research up here.’ He says, His Royal Highness Prince Nawaf who
was in Fiji has approached him and would like to meet with you. You better get off your ass and get
back here to Sydney we're having a dinner at the Elizabeth Bay House. He says it's just for the
opening for the Elizabeth Bay House which has just been renovated and they’re having their first
dinner there and we'd like you to come along. Well I thought this is marvellous. So I fly in from
Darwin, I get ready and I go to Elizabeth Bay House for the evening and there’s Lenny Hewitt who I
knew, my old pal and there was the Premier Wran and all the other dignitaries. And there was the
Royal Highness and all his entourage and all very pretty looking ladies too which I enjoyed sitting
beside. And I remember in the newspaper when I got back 'cause the message had gone out that his
entourage just liked Dom Pérignon Champagne. So on that opening night at Elizabeth Bay House all
along the table there were bottles of Dom Pérignon. It was wonderful. I was able to imbibe and enjoy
the evening and about 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning the speeches started. The Premier got up and
said some very kind words, and Lenny Hewitt got up and said a few nice words, and finally the
Prince got up and said very few words too. He said he was interested in our development and he'd
like to, did I have any documentation?
[02:27:38.02] Realize this is 3 o'clock in the morning. I’m up in William Street. At about 7 o'clock in
the morning I’m catching the plane back to Darwin. The ship is sitting at the wharf costing the
University of Sydney two thousand dollars a day. So I come back to the School by myself, I go into
the copy room and make copies of the documents on our development about our selective services. I
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then go back, drive back to the hotel on William Street and then have the package put on the Royal
Highness' or his entourages door saying here’s the material, I’m off the Darwin in a few hours time,
if you’re really serious then contact me. I get off the plane in Darwin get to the ship and the first
message I receive: His Royal Highness would like to have you back again. I don’t even unpack, I go
straight back to the bloody airport and I fly back to Sydney again. I meet with entourage from His
Royal Highness, they want to come and examine the stuff in the School of Physics which they do.
There’s a story there that I’ve just missed for a minute. When I came back from overseas and I saw
the people upstairs and approached DFAT, Foreign Affairs, I also tried to approach Doug Anthony
who was then the Minister and I think Paul Barrett who later became Defence Secretary was an
assistant to him. I went to see them in Canberra and presented the case to Doug Anthony thinking it
must be a minister for natural resources or something in those days. The case was that he should
support our solar energy because of all this excitement and so forth, and he turned to Paul and he
said, ‘What do you say Paul?’ So he said, ‘Minister we could set up a committee.’ And I said, ‘Paul
that’s exactly what the hell I thought you would say. You haven’t changed from the time when I was
with the government in Canberra in '72. Set up another committee, do nothing.’ At that very moment
the secretary comes into the office and says, ‘Professor, there’s an urgent call for you from Mr.
Wran, will you come out and take it?’ So I came out and said ‘Yes, sir Premier? He says, ‘What are
you doing?’ I said I’m in Canberra begging for money. He says, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because my solar
energy group is going to be closed down I got a letter from the University, it's going to be closed
down. He says it's not going to be closed down. I say, ‘Yes, it is Premier.’ He says ‘I’m telling you
it's not going to be closed down. Get off your ass and get into my office.’ I thanked Anthony, got in
the car, drove straight back to Sydney, straight to the Premier's office. I go up there and his right
hand man Jerry Gleeson is sitting there with the Premier and he says, ‘Now what do you need?’ So I
told him the whole story of what had happened. ‘He says, ‘How much do you need?’ I say, ‘Two
million dollars, Premier. He heard the story. He says, ‘Jerry, you see that the University gets the two
million dollars.’ ‘Yes, Premier, thank you.’ A week later or two weeks later, I don’t remember it was
a short period of time, I get called in from the premier again. He wants to see Messel, so I go upstairs
and there’s the Premier sitting there and Jerry Gleeson, very well known public servant you’ll
remember very well. And he says to him, ‘Well the Professor's here now Jerry. What’s happening
with the request from the Professor? He says, ‘Well Premier, we've had the committee established
and they recommended a grant of thirty thousand dollars. The Premier said, ‘Jerry, I said two million
bloody dollars!’ He took the report, he ripped it in half and threw it in the waste paper basket. A
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couple of weeks later, you know, we got the two million dollars from the Premier, then came the
story about Prince Nawaf. This was all happening very fast. I came back and at that dinner the
Premier and his people looked at it. I then had to meet Nawaf and his staff at the Premier's office,
Wran's office. So I went upstairs, I met with Wran in his office said, ‘Premier, what should I ask for?
He says, ‘What do you need?’ ‘I say, ‘Five million dollars. He says, ‘Alright, well. why don’t you
ask him for it?’ So there are the entourage sitting there and Premier walks in and I walk in and he sat
down very gently and very quietly. His Royal Highness says, ‘Professor, my people looked at this
and would be like to help you. What is required?’ And I said, ‘Five million dollars, your
Excellency.’ And I thought he was going to blow up. Instead his eyes didn’t blink, there was no sign
in his face whatsoever, absolute deadpan. He said, ‘Thank you, Professor. We'll look at it.’ Of course
two days later I got the news, the five million dollars. So there was the five million bucks you
understand.
[02:33:54.17] Now of course we went from strength to strength. We did a lot of good work and
Professor Collins got appointed and all the rest, and David Mills was here. It was very exciting
times, but it is really quite phenomenal how things such as this occurred. I never cease to marvel.
You can never call the shots completely. You may think you know the whole story but you don’t and
life has some very fascinating, exciting twists and turns from that dinner at Parkes in London
through to The Pierre restaurant through to Doug Anthony through to the Wran office through to His
Royal Highness. It was actually magnificent, so again this was the story of a lot of the big money to
us coming from overseas.
[02:34:47.07] DAME LEONIE: You brought into the country nuclear material for experiments?
HARRY MESSEL: Yeah well that was in the early 1950s. As I said our Foundation started off as a
Nuclear Research Foundation, very much oriented towards the question of the peaceful uses of
atomic energy. The Nuclear Research Foundation was very deeply involved in this fighting with the
government, fighting with pretty much well everybody throughout the community in relation to
nuclear power at that time known as atomic power. I was very anxious that Australia have trained
staff in order to go forward in this field. In the meantime you remember the atomic bomb tests going
on at Maralinga and going on in Australia by the Brits. So there was one group of people talking
about the destructive aspects of nuclear energy. There was another group like myself talking about
the constructive part, and that was the constructive part that I was very interested in. One of the
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interesting parts the constructive part was radioisotopes, radioisotopes in industry, radioisotopes in
medicine and so forth. At one of the first Science Schools given to the science teachers, there was a
whole book, a whole series of lectures on that. Because of that interest we brought out to Australia
great expense for the Foundation, lock stock and barrel, the whole radioisotope from Harwell in
England with all the staff and all the equipment. Downstairs in the basement of the Physics School
we provided this course for several months for dozens and dozens of people from Australia. This
caused a great deal of interest in the hospitals and in the people involved. St Vincent’s Hospital set
up its own nuclear medicine department following on from this, and Professor Paul George, who
was one of my professors in the cosmic ray field here, became the first professor of nuclear medicine
at St Vincent’s Hospital. But we had brought that course out to Australia and instigated it, and all
this activity on our part in the atomic energy field was forcing the hands of the Australian
government in the nuclear field. I wanted to see that we had an experimental nuclear reactor in order
to train our people. We'd gone to the point of actually having one offered to us free of charge by the
Americans to prevent us from going ahead with that. Apparently the cabinet minutes have now been
released: it was decided that we wouldn’t go ahead, that they wouldn’t support us. But the
government itself would go and establish the Atomic Energy Commission. Once it did that I then
wanted to be very certain that not only was the commission established but that the universities
would have access to it. I started forcing the hand of the bureaucrats and the government at that time
to provide the facilities for scientists from the universities to make use of those facilities.
[02:38:08.19] Now you remember in those days 50 years ago that the utilisation of government
facilities in a non-university place such as CSIRO by the universities wasn’t exactly welcome
because they were looking upon the universities as competitors. These days of course we're all very
friendly so things have changed, but because of our insistence that the universities have these
facilities and if they didn’t have them then we should have them. They then decided to establish the
Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering out of the Atomic Energy Commission at Lucas
Heights and a week ago today I was at the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of that and they gave
due credit to the University and myself. There’s others involved in saying this. They had to do that
because when the Murray Committee Commission Report came up in 1957 and the first big
Commission Report on university education, they gave credit to the Foundation for this as well. So it
was well and truly recorded. It was exciting times. We played a very big role in those days and
seeing that the Commission was involved in this, we were kept at arms length in those early days by
Sir Philip Baxter and some of his colleagues. The wheels then eventually turned full circle because
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later on I became a member of the Commission myself and I was a member of the Commission for
seven years. Then one of my members of staff Max Brennan then became the Chairman and then my
next member of staff Dick Collins became the Chairman. So from the group which we'd been
opposed and kept out of, eventually we controlled. So it was a lovely story. Of course our
relationships these days, they are wonderful. Things have changed tremendously in Australia for the
best in this way. I mean the competition between these governmental places like CSIRO, the atomic
energy groups and other laboratories and the universities in those days was horrendous because
we're all fighting for a piece of the pie which was very small in those days. Now the pie may not be
much greater but we're all there on a much, much more friendly basis.
[02:40:33.01] DAME LEONIE: How did you administer this School?
HARRY MESSEL: Well I was very tough, very uncompromising, very uncompromising. I believe
that if to be a leader either the Head of a School or a Head of a University you can't go round and
expect to and wish to win a popularity contest. You had to be prepared to make the tough decisions
and those tough decisions can be hard for you to mentally to make. You can suffer if you were trying
to make someone redundant, who you know has got two children at a private school, has got a big
mortgage on his home and you’re making him redundant and the person starts crying in front of you
– what do you do? You bloody start crying with him, it is terribly difficult. You have to make tough
decisions and some of those tough decisions can hurt you internally a great deal. But they have to be
made for the sake of the organization and I think this is particularly so at the present moment in
Australia, this is the case. Now during my time at the School of Physics, I was blessed in so far that I
was on a very steep growth curve, I might say talking about growth curves, we never mentioned the
fact of these multi professorial departments. This was the biggest battle in the history of the
University of Sydney: to be able to get multi-professorial appointments through here. I realized that
when I tried to get the Hanbury Browns, the Bernie Mills, the Stuart Butlers, the Charlie Watson
Munros, I could not expect them to come and head up the research groups and stay as junior
members of staff. These people were senior both internationally and nationally and that eventually,
they had the right to be a full professor. Now this meant that completely contrary to what had been in
the University of Sydney for decades before, you’d have to allow there to be more than one god
within a department, not just a one god like professor who was a boss and everything else. There
could be several gods and I realized that unless you did that you could never build up a really
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international research group. So I then proposed in the early 1960s the fact that the School should
have more professors than myself. Now I forget whether it's Professor McCusker or it's Professor
Munro or whether it's Professor Mills or Butler, who it was, but I then had to fight to allow more
than one professor on the staff and establishment of the university. This became a major point of
contention within the University of Sydney. Debate raged hard and long. Eventually Professor T.G.
Room, then Dean of the Faculty of Science was appointed Chairman of the Committee to examine
the question of multi professorial departments within the University of Sydney. They met on many
occasions and met with me. I realized that there was great opposition to this in certain departments.
Certain god-like figures who felt like there should be only one god; others like myself were quite
happy. The more gods around me, the better.
[02:44:29.01] So eventually Professor T.G Room came down and called me up and his office was
right above here on the next floor and said the committee has agreed that there should be multi
professorial departments and they were making a recommendation in accordance with that view to
the Professorial Board. The Professorial Board in those days used to meet at 2pm up in the old
Senate Room. At 1 o'clock on the day that this was going forward and the papers had been circulated
before. On the day of the meeting, Room phones me up and says the Committee has changed its
mind and was going to recommend against it, knowing fully well at 1 o'clock everybody had gone to
lunch. I couldn’t contact anybody else to make any discussion so at 2pm we meet up in the Senate
Room and then started one of the most vicious academic debates you could possibly imagine. Toing
and froing, the mathematicians, the applied mathematicians and so forth were all against it. The
arguments went to and fro and I had the support, just like in the appointment to you, the support of
the law people, the legal people, Julius Stone, your and the rest and the medical people came in my
support. Finally I think at 6 o'clock that day Steven Roberts said, ‘You know, we are now
concluding one the longest Professorial Board meetings in the history of the University. We are now
going to make a decision which will not only have great consequences for the University of Sydney
but for all the universities in Australia.’ We voted and I won. I’ll never forget that, I just about
fainted with delight on such a thing. Eventually I had seven professors in the School of Physics and
so everybody else, and so all the other Australian universities went that way. The multi professorial
departments fight was fundamental and tremendous significance over 40 years ago, and it was that
which allowed so many of the departments in this University and in this School to develop in the
fashion they did. So that’s one battle I fought, fought very hard and I was very pleased with the
outcome for the sake of universities and academia in Australia.
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[02:47:04.28] DAME LEONIE: Didn’t know about that, that’s a wonderful story. Now... oh yes,
how are you regarded, this is a bit cheeky too I think, how were you regarded by the research teams
and the support staff?
HARRY MESSEL: Well I’d say generally speaking, you ask me how I was regarded? I think I was
disliked. I think I’ve been disliked most of my life. I’ve got to the stage where unless I’m disliked
there’s something wrong. I mean on such a thing, I’ve never set out to win a popularity contests,
decisions had to be made. I tried to make the best decisions I could possibly would. I think some
people at times liked me; other people probably damned me. Other people I’d be able to answer that
but I never looked upon myself as a person that was particularly the flavour of the month.
DAME LEONIE: Now the last one is also a personal question. You’ve also said in one of the other
transcripts I read even when I was aged 5 or 6 that at some time or other I was going, I knew I was
going to be concerned with the university and academic life. That’s interesting to me because it's
very precocious sort of thing for a child to, at that age 5 or 6, to think about--
HARRY MESSEL: I think it still surprises me. I used to lie in bed, three of us in one bed. It was a
great idea especially in winter, kept warm in Manitoba at the present time. And the question which
concerned me most when I was young, don’t ask me how or why, was: what am I doing here? You
know, why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? I’m catching skunks, I’m catching weasels,
I’m catching mink, I’m looking after the cows, I do the gardening in the summer, I chop the wood
for the winter. I bank the house in the summer for the winter; unbank it in the springtime. But why
am I here? And that used to worry me greatly, I could never really answer that in a satisfactory
fashion at that time and finally I came up with a very incredible answer which satisfied me, which
was probably a lot of bull that I thought I was here to make this place better. And there I was as a
young kid thinking those crazy things.
[02:49:55.16] DAME LEONIE: I wonder if that was related to what you were talking about reading
in school--
11995596/148
HARRY MESSEL: Oh very much so, I think it's absolutely so. I think one of the important and the
most important things in my youth was my reading. It was really quite incredible.
DAME LEONIE: I suppose it gave you a view of totally different worlds.
HARRY MESSEL: Yes, it did, and I just used to love it, I never used to stop and I still do.
DAME LEONIE: Did you determine the directions of research or appoint people with different and
related research ideas?
HARRY MESSEL: I think generally speaking, 95% I determined the direction which the School
went. I listened very carefully to my staff. Even though we were at arm's length we were very, very
friendly on this. We had, what I instituted in the School of Physics, was what was known as the
progress meetings. And in the early days, every Saturday morning at 11 o'clock, up at that far end on
the third level we used to have our progress meetings which used to annoy the hell out of the staff
'cause we then used to come in and attendance was compulsory for all the research groups and staff.
You’d have a hard time doing it now but you could do it in those days and we would discuss each
one would then explain what they’re doing, the problems that they had and so forth. That then
developed into what was known as the progress meetings. Every Monday once a month, on a
Monday in Lecture Room 3 where the science lectures were held, we would have progress meetings
and all the research students and all the staff were there in which the leader of each research team
would give a report on what they were doing, what problems they had so that everybody in the
school knew all the time what was happening. I insisted upon that, no sooner had I retired that they
stopped it. To this day they know why I think it was a bad mistake because this way everybody in
the School always knew what was going on. The progress meeting minutes, there’s piles of them
they’re all in the University archive. They’re all there because we had a minute taker and all the
minutes were kept there. A wonderful history of the School of Physics, of the actual research
projects and the problems with the teaching and the research because I had Director of First Year,
Second Year, Third Year there, the Honours Year was there, and people were able to answer
questions. Sometimes those meetings got very heated, I might tell you, but we let it all hang out
there and I felt it was one of the most valuable things I did. Why it's been stopped, I have no idea
and I don’t really want to ask any questions.
11995596/149
[02:53:16.24] DAME LEONIE: Now I’m going to go right back to the beginning. It goes back to
Steven Roberts and I’ll just read this bit again which I read at the beginning. He prophesized that the
tribulations of the administrative world would be added to by the dynamic personality that was you,
but that was an anxiety he obviously had, the compensation being that physics will gain an
international reputation, well I think you can claim the second.
HARRY MESSEL: Yeah, I certainly can, I certainly can--
DAME LEONIE: Whether he was right about the first--
HARRY MESSEL: It must have been a very difficult thing indeed for the University of Sydney in
those early days to have to support me because I was very determined and very insistent on the
quality, on standards, on the ability to do things, to cut across and take shortcuts. It required an
enormous amount of understanding on the part of the University. The people that I remember so well
who knew me and I think understood me were Margaret Telfer, the Registrar, Harold Maze David
Wood, the Vice-Chancellor’s helper and the Vice-Chancellor. They had to cut across all sorts of
things in this university because there were many people who were opposed to what I was doing and
say, well why could Messel do this and why can't we do that? Well of course the answer was, Messel
was doing this and you weren’t, you know. They put up with a great deal of flack on behalf of this
School and this I paid great tribute to the University that was able to do that. I think it worked well.
END TRANSCRIPT
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