Royal Society of NSW News & Events

The Society's awards for 2018 (Clarke Medal, Edgeworth David Medal, History & Philosophy of Science Medal, James Cook Medal, Poggendorff Lecture and RSNSW Scholarship) were announced by the President at the OGM on 5 December. Full details are available here.

Government House and group outside

Anne Williamson and Phil Waite

Ian Wilkinson and others in lecture

President with Brian and Brynn

Louise Young

Virginia Judge

Mary-Anne Williams lecturing

Distinguished Fellow of RSNSW, Professor Kurt Lambeck AO FRS FAA has been awarded the 2018 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science. The award, made at the Prime Minister’s Prize event at Canberra’s Parliament House on 17 October, recognises Lambeck’s 50-year contribution to Australian and global science through his geodesy research.

According to the prize announcement from the Prime Minister’s office, “Kurt Lambeck AO has revealed how our planet changes shape—every second, every day, and over millennia. These changes influence sea levels, the movement of continents, and the orbits of satellites. Kurt’s original work in the 1960s enabled accurate planning of space missions. It led him to use the deformation of continents during the ice ages to study changes deep in the mantle of the planet. It also led to a better understanding of the impact of sea level changes on human civilization in the past, present and future.”

Council member Dr Chris Bertram FRSN was presented with the David Dewhurst Award at the recent Australian Biomedical Engineering Conference. The David Dewhurst Award is given annually by Engineers Australia (Australia's peak body for engineers, representing over 100,000 members) to a biomedical engineer who has made exceptional, sustained and significant contributions to the field.

Professor Nalini Joshi AO FRSN has been elected Vice-President of the International Mathematical Union, from the start of 2019. She becomes the first Australian to hold this position.  Besides being a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW, Professor Joshi is a member of its governing Council.

Two of our members have recently been elected as Fellows of the prestigious Royal Society of London. They are Michelle Simmons DistFRSN (who is already Australian of the Year) and Graeme Jameson FRSN from the University of Newcastle.

And recently elected FRSN Veena Sahajwalla has just been elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

We also congratulate our Fellows who received an award in the latest Queen’s Honours List:
Geoffrey Harcourt AC
David Cook AO and Emma Johnston AO
Barbara Briggs AM and Brynn Hibbert AM, our immediate past President

At the 151st AGM held on 4 April 2018, Emeritus Scientia Professor Ian Sloan AO FRSN was installed as President of the Society.  As Professor Sloan was overseas and unable to attend the meeting, he addressed the audience in a video.  The text of his address is given here.

If you are seeing this video, then I must have been elected as President of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and I must be in Providence, Rhode Island.  I’m sorry that I can’t be with you.

What an honour it is to be President of our Royal Society!  By my count I am the 119th President, in a line stretching back to 1821.

Let me tell you a little about our first President.  Sir Thomas arrived as Governor of New South Wales in 1821.  He was a soldier (finishing with the rank of Major General).  But he was also a scientist, specifically an astronomer, and a great patron of science.  He built an astronomical observatory at Parramatta, something wonderful to think about with the colony only 35 years old.  After returning to Great Britain he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Our first President was a fine example of all that is best about our Royal Society.  There are many other great names among the presidents that follow, but I want to jump forward around 200 years, because our proud history counts for little unless we are doing something now.  I want to pay particular respect to my recent predecessors as President: to John Hardie and Donald Hector, and especially to immediate-past-President Brynn Hibbert.  These three have presided over major transformation and reform.  Especially important has been the reinvention of the Fellows program, and a renewed emphasis on expanded membership.  By now the Fellows and Members together number around 400, giving us increased strength as a society.  Recent presidents have also been taking seriously the commitment not just to science (though science remains deep in our DNA) but also to “Art, Literature and Philosophy”, which we nowadays interpret rather broadly, to include all of the key intellectual and creative endeavours of our time.  My commitment as President will be to continue to develop in these directions, and to make sure that the Society is important to its Members and Fellows.

Thank you.

In accordance with the Society's rules, the list of candidates is displayed here.

The election took place at the annual general meeting on Wednesday 4 April 2018 at the Union University & Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney.  Polling opened at 5.30pm and closed at 6.15pm.

The results of the election were as follows.

The Society's annual RSNSW and Four Academies Forum took place on 29 November last, hosted by His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales at Government House.  The abstracts of the presentations can be accessed here.

The Council of the Society is pleased to announce that it has reached agreement with the Board of the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts (SMSA) to establish a strategic partnership. This partnership reflects the similar heritage of the two organisations and their commitment to advancing knowledge and engaging with the broadest possible audience in New South Wales.

The Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts (SMSA) was established in 1833, following the Scottish example of providing open access to education for the working classes, who, historically, had been excluded from formal, traditional education systems. The Governor at the time was Sir Richard Bourke, who was a strong supporter of it with an annual allowance of £200. In 1886, the SMSA was incorporated by an act of the NSW Parliament, similar to the act which, in 1881, formally established the Society as a body corporate.

Originally, the SMSA occupied the building that is currently the Arthouse Hotel, at 271 Pitt Street. The SMSA sold this building in the 1990s to Alan Bond’s corporation for redevelopment of the site. With the proceeds, the SMSA bought a building at 280 Pitt Street that could house their activities and provide a source of rental income. The SMSA occupies three floors of this building. The third floor houses offices and meeting rooms and the Thomas Kenneally Collection, the private library donated to the SMSA some years ago by Thomas Keneally FRSN. The second floor houses an extensive lending library and the first floor has an auditorium that seats about 130 people, some smaller meeting rooms, and facilities for limited catering.

Over the last 18 months or so, the Council of the Society and the Board of the SMSA have had extensive discussions regarding ways in which the two organisations could collaborate to gain synergies from their similar objectives and activities and to enhance the standing of both organisations. The governing bodies of both organisations formally signed off on the strategic partnership in September.

Key elements of this agreement include:
• Development of a joint program of events that will be broadly attractive to members of both organisations and the general public;
• Display of important selections of material from the Society’s library;
• Reciprocal membership benefits between the two organisations when engaged in joint activities.

In addition, the Society will hold some of its own functions at the SMSA auditorium and meeting rooms, particularly when they are expected to attract larger audiences. The location near Town Hall station and one of the new Metro line stations is particularly convenient. The Society’s presence in the building will be identified in the main foyer with its name and seal.

The Council believes this partnership is a very important initiative and will further consolidate our efforts to promote the Society plus increasing its influence in the intellectual life of New South Wales. We look forward very much to working with the SMSA in taking this arrangement forward.

A formal Memorandum of Understanding between the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts and the Royal Society of NSW was signed on 30 October 2017.  At the signing were [front row, L to R] Thomas Kenneally AO FRSN, Winsome Allen (SMSA President), Emeritus Professor Brynn Hibbert (RSNSW President), [back row, L to R] Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy AM FRSN, Denis Mockler (SMSA Board member) and John Hardie FRSN (RSNSW Councillor).

    
  Guests of Honour:

  His Excellency General The Honourable David
  Hurley AC DSC (ret’d.), Governor of New South
  Wales and Patron of the Royal Society of New South
  Wales, and Mrs Hurley

   
  Distinguished Fellow's Lecture:

  “Don’t blame the unemployed”

  Hon Emeritus Professor Peter Baume AC DistFRSN

Award of Medals and Prizes:

Wednesday 3 May 2017
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

President Brynn Hibbert and the MC, Judith Wheeldon   |   Associate Professor Muireann Irish and the Governor

Professor Simon Turner and the Governor   |   Professor Justin Gooding and the Governor

Emeritus Professor Roy MacLeod and the Governor   |   Associate Professor Andrew Robson and the Governor

Professor David Cooper and the Governor   |   Dr Mohammad Choucair and Hon. Emeritus Professor Peter Baume

The Royal Society of NSW supported the March for Science held on 22 April.

For more details about the March go to its website here

At its Council meeting of 15th March the Society passed the following motion:

The Society supports the principles upon which the “March for Science” is based and encourages Fellows and Members of the Society to participate in it.

The event was a great success, with many people marching in support of science around the world. 

  “Dark matter in the universe”

  The Dirac Lecture and award of the Dirac Medal

  Duffield Professor Kenneth Freeman FRS
  Australian National University

Thursday 13 October 2016
Tyree Room, John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW

The Dirac Medal is based on rules established in 1990 by the then Vice Chancellor of the University of NSW Sir Rupert Meyers. It is awarded in the name of Professor Paul Dirac who donated the royalties of his published lectures in Australasia in 1975. In its early years the award was organised by UNSW in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Physics. The first convenor of the awards was Professor Heinrich Hora FRSN, Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics. Of the first eleven Dirac Lectures nine awardees were Nobel Laureates. In 2010 the Governor of NSW presented the award to Lord Robert May of Oxford and the Royal Society became involved. Of the last five awards, two recipients are Nobel-Laureates.

Professor Freeman’s research is about the formation and dynamics of galaxies with a particular interest in the problem of dark matter in galaxies. He was one of the first to point out that spiral galaxies contain a large fraction of dark matter. He is active in international astronomy, as a division past-president of the International Astronomical Union, and serves on visiting committees for several major astronomical institutions around the world.

As of April 2016, Chris Bertram has taken on the job of RSNSW Webmaster.

  “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 experimental quantum physics at Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory and been the Chair of Experimental Physics at UNSW. He has been head of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology at UNSW and has been Australia's Chief Defence Scientist and CEO of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

The agreement resulting from the Paris climate change conference held in December 2015 is one of the most important initiatives to address climate change so far. Some key points that came from a conference that will affect Australia other massive investment in solar energy technology (India and China have committed US$1 trillion to the development of solar energy technology over the next decade or two. Australia has committed to emissions targets of a 5% reduction (compared to 2000 levels) by 2020 and, by 2030, a 26-28% reduction compared to 2005 levels. In addition, Australia has committed to a target of 24% of Australia's generation capacity to be renewable by 2020. Nonetheless, German modelling shows that very large amounts of coal, oil and gas will be required to meet global energy demand at least until 2050 and probably well beyond then. Over the next 20 years, the urbanisation of India's population and the investment in base-load, coal-fired power generation capacity, even taking into account substantial expansion of nuclear capacity will result in a very substantial increase in coal-based CO₂ emissions. Australia's energy requirements are characterised by having very large amounts of LNG, coal, coal-seam gas and shale gas but a deficiency in liquid fuels – most of Australia's liquid fuels are imported.

Professor Clark has devoted several years to looking at a number of specific problems in the energy sector and gave several examples of his work. One major user of liquid fuels is freight forwarding. The movement of freight accounts for 194 billion freight-tonne-kilometres per year. Of this 151 billion is moved by B-double trucks (there are 84,000 of these servicing freight routes in Australia). Converting these trucks from diesel (most of which is imported) to LNG (which could be sourced locally) would result in a substantial improvement in emissions (gas produces a little over 70% of the CO₂ that diesel emits, for the same energy output) and would have a noticeable impact on Australia's liquid fuels balance and the current account.

Nuclear energy is an area that has been contentious in Australia. In the last few years, there has been a call to consider installation of substantial base-load nuclear generation capacity. Professor Clark noted that the future total Australian electricity generation requirement at the investment horizon is about 250 TW-hours. If nuclear generation capacity were to provide 15% of this, it would require five 1,000-MW nuclear reactors – one near every major city. The political, planning and capital requirements of such an investment are probably insurmountable. On the other hand, if Australia were to export uranium (on a lease, not sale basis, so that the uranium can be tracked, accounted for and ultimately returned to Australia for reprocessing or final storage), the impact on global CO₂ emissions by supplying Australian uranium to existing and proposed nuclear generation plants, particularly in China and India would provide 10 times the impact on CO₂ emissions compared to building base-load generation in Australia. This case demonstrates the importance of taking a global perspective on CO₂ emissions and climate change, rather than a purely domestic analysis.

Professor Clark concluded by observing that there is still a need for substantive policy development in this area. The recent Energy White Paper 2015 is more of a statement regarding the energy situation, than a policy document. An important point that emerged from Professor Clark's wide-ranging talk is that energy policy ultimately will need to address a complex mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources.

The Four Societies Lecture is presented annually by the Royal Society of NSW, the Australian Institute of Energy, the Nuclear Panel of Engineers Australia (Sydney Division) and the Australian Nuclear Association.

“Quantum entanglement and superconductivity”

  Professor Subir Sachdev

  Professor of Physics, Harvard University

Held in conjunction with UNSW and the Australian Institute of Physics

Tuesday 1 September 2015
John B. Reid Theatre, AGSM Building, UNSW

Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance". Entanglement is a counter-intuitive feature of quantum theory by which two particles are deeply correlated even when separated by vast distances, such that a measurement of one particle instantaneously determines the state of the other. Remarkably, quantum entanglement can also happen en masse, determining the macroscopic properties of many electrons in certain crystals. Such states of matter can exhibit superconductivity, the ability to conduct electricity without measurable resistance, at much higher temperatures than was previously possible.

Professor Sachdev also described newly emerging connections between the theory of macroscopic quantum entanglement and Hawking's theory of black holes.