Royal Society of NSW News & Events

“Big history”   Professor David Christian  Director, The Big History Institute  Macquarie University Wednesday 4 November 2015Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney Since the beginnings of human history, taking stories from the past and synthesising them has delivered far more than the sum of the pa...

Royal Society of NSW scholarship winners 2015 Wednesday 4 February 2015Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney Melanie LairdSchool of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney Melanie is a University Medallist in her second year of a PhD under the supervision of Professor Michael Thompson, studying reproduction in marsupials. Rut...

  “Australian energy policy”  Professor Robert Clark AO FAA DistFRSN  Chair of Energy Strategy and Policy, UNSW Thursday 25 February 2016 Hamilton and Parkes Rooms, Level 47, MLC Centre, King and Castlereagh Streets, Sydney Professor Robert Clark has had a distinguished career, having headed a research group in experim...

Note: the OGM number 1239 is not used for administrative reasons. Royal Society of New South Wales Scholarship presentations The scholarship winners with the President of the Royal Society of NSW, Dr Donald HectorL-R: Yevgeny Stadnik, Adam Dudek, Don Hector, Charles Forster Wednesday 3 February 2016Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street...

   “Royal Society of NSW – relevance in the 21st   century”   Dr Donald Hector FRSN   President Wednesday 6 April 2016Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney Donald Hector was President of the Royal Society of NSW for four years from 2012 to 2016. This is an excerpt from his ...

“How to win an IgNobel Prize and other adventures in communicating science”   Dr Len Fisher  Visiting Fellow in Physics,  University of Bristol Wednesday 2 March 2016Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney This talk in a fun and interesting way was about how scientists go about their work. In 1999, D...

“Royal” not “Philosophical” - W.B. Clarke's Inaugural Address to the Royal Society of NSW   Dr Bob Young   Associate Professor of Geoscience (ret’d),   University of Wollongong Wednesday 6 July 2016Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney The Royal Society of New South Wales is 150 years old this year...

 “The curious case of the scientist in cinema: how  Indiana Jones turns out to be the bad guy!”  Professor Peter Hiscock  Tom Austen Brown Professor of Australian  Archaeology, University of Sydney Wednesday 1 June 2016Union, University & Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney Uplifting music and the s...

"The genetics behind our drinking water turning toxic" Professor Brett Neilan, School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of NSW Wednesday 3 May 2006, 6.30 for 7 pm Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, City Road BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Professor Brett Neilan was a member of the team who won the Royal Societies of Australia 2004 Eurek...

"Cold fusion, the alchemist's dream?" Annual General Meeting & Presidential Address by Professor Jak Kelly, President of the Society Wednesday 5 April 2006, 6.30 for 7 pm Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, City Road ABSTRACT A brief history of cold fusion and where it fits into conventional physics will be given, leading up to the most recen...

"A cradle-to-grave concept for Australia's uranium" The February meeting of the Royal Society of NSW was the annual meeting of the four Societies: The Royal Society of New South Wales, The Australian Institute of Energy, Australian Nuclear Association and Engineers Australia (NUC Engineering Panel). Speaker: Dr Clarence Hardy, Secretary ANA, Vice-P...

"TB: controlling the old scourge" Professor Warwick Britton, Head, Mycobacterial Research GroupCentenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology, University of Sydney Wednesday 5 October 2005, 6 pm for 6.30 Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, City Road ABSTRACT Nine million people contract tuberculosis every year and two million die. Over 9...

"The quickening: beginning of animal life on Earth" Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, Monash University Wednesday 7 September 2005, 6 pm for 6.30 Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, University of Sydney ABSTRACT Four places in the world have yielded a most spectacular record of animal life prior to the time when shells and skeletons appeared - all...

Thursday, 27 February 2014"Questions of power in NSW"Professor Mary O'Kane, NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer At the annual Four Societies Lecture, Professor Mary O'Kane considered the major questions that face NSW in the future of energy production and utilisation. Asking the right questions is key – it reduces the time taken to identify the best s...

"The fourth dimension and beyond - the paradox of working in unimaginable worlds"Emeritus Scientia Professor Ian Sloan AO FRSNDate: Wednesday 3 September 2014 Professor Ian Sloan is not content to work in an environment of four dimensions – he is quite at home in space with many more dimensions than most of us are accustomed to. Many mathemati...

"Australia's most spectacular environmental rehabilitation project: Phillip Island, Pacific Ocean"Dr Peter CoynDate: Wednesday, 1 October 2014 Perched atop a submerged seamount, in turn atop a submarine ridge, Phillip Island and its close neighbour Norfolk Island are tiny specks, the only land in a vast expanse (2.5 million square kilometres) ...

"A drop of optics"Dr Steve Lee and Dr Tri Phan, joint winners of the 2014 ANSTO Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of TechnologyDate: Wednesday 5 November 2014 The talk at the 1227th AGM was presented by Dr Steve Lee and Dr Tri Phan, joint winners of the 2014 ANSTO Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology. They received the award for develop...

Barry Jones

David Malouf

"Belief and science: the belief/knowledge dilemma"Barry Jones and David MaloufWednesday 6 April 2011 at 6 pmThe Darlington Centre, University of Sydney Have scientists become polarised into believers and non-believers? Barry Jones posed this question to David Malouf and members of the Society at the 1190th General Meeting on Wednesday, 6 April 2011...

Back row: Benjamin Eggleton, Jerome Vanclay, Richard Banati, Ian Dawes, John Gascoigne. Front row: Aibing Yu, Ian Sloan, Judith Wheeldon, Donald Hector (President), Heinrich Hora, Merlin Crossley, Trevor Hambley

Left to right: Assoc Prof David Wilson, President Dr Donald Hector, Prof Brien Holden and Prof Michelle Simmons DistFRSN.

On Wednesday 7 May, the annual awards evening and annual dinner was held at the Union University and Schools Club in Sydney. The dinner was extremely well attended and the address by Professor Barry Jones AC FAA FACE FAHA FASSA FTSE DistFRSN on the attack on the scientific method stimulated a lot of discussion. During the evening, the Society's 201...

Prof Barry Jones AC DistFRSN delivers the second Royal Society of NSW Distinguished Fellow's Lecture.

The Society was proud to have Professor Barry Jones AC DistFRSN present the second annual Distinguished Fellow's Lecture at the Society's annual dinner on Wednesday 7 May 2014. Professor Jones is the only person to be a Fellow of all four of Australia's learned Academies.