STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL ... · 4 And now let’s just enjoy some of...
Transcript of STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL ... · 4 And now let’s just enjoy some of...
STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
OH 582
Full transcript of
SIR MARK OLIPHANT CEREMONY
on 18 August 2000
at Bonython Hall
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library
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OH 582 SIR MARK OLIPHANT CEREMONY
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.
Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.
This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.
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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, MORTLOCK
LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 582
ABC radio recording of Sir Mark Oliphant Memorial Ceremony held at
Bonython Hall, The University of Adelaide, on 18th
August 2000.
TAPE 1 SIDE A
ANNOUNCER – You’re with 891 ABC Adelaide, and now we cross to Neil Wiese
at The University of Adelaide for the Memorial Ceremony for Sir Mark Oliphant.
WIESE – Good morning, and welcome to Bonython Hall where today many
eminent South Australians are gathered to pay tribute to Sir Mark Oliphant. It is
appropriate that the ceremony is being held here, at The University of Adelaide,
where in 1919 Sir Mark began studying Physics. Now, as an agnostic, Sir Mark
did not want a church service, so we’re here today for a memorial ceremony and
to hear from those who want to pay tribute to this great South Australian.
Members of Sir Mark Oliphant’s family are being seated in the hall, the last to be
seated Ms Vivienne Wilson and Dr Keith Powell, Mr Michael and Mrs Peppi
Lawson, Mrs Monica Oliphant, Ms Michelle Oliphant, Ms Katherine Oliphant
and Mr Tony Reith and their child, Anna.
Invited guests have been arriving here at Bonython Hall since just after nine this
morning to the strains of Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel by the Zephyr String
Quartet. Today’s memorial ceremony is being led by Dr Harry Medlin, Visiting
Associate Professor in Physics and Mathematical Physics, and Emeritus Senior
Deputy Chancellor at The University of Adelaide.
Now, amongst some of the guests here today we have four Premiers. We have the
current Premier, John Olsen, the immediate past Premier, Dean Brown, and also
John Bannon and Dr David Tonkin, a former Premier. And we also have the
former Governor of South Australia, Sir Keith Seaman and Lady Seaman, and
another former Governor of South Australia, Sir Donald Dunstan and Lady
Dunstan. And we also have a number of Members of State Parliament.
And the people are gathered here now; the Bonython Hall is full, and the scenes
that we’re seeing here are quite moving.
Now, after the War, it’s interesting to note that Sir Mark returned to the
University of Birmingham, where he continued as Professor of Physics and helped
build the proton synchrotron. You may recall there in 1950 he was approached
by the newly-established Australian National University to become the first
Director of the ANU Research School of Physical Sciences. He accepted, and he
returned to Australia with his family. Now, establishing the Australian Academy
of Science was just one of Sir Mark’s proudest achievements. He realised, upon
his return to Australia in 1950, that Australia had no voice, no international voice,
in the scientific arena.
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And now let’s just enjoy some of that music while we await the speakers.
(Music continues for several minutes.)
Would you please stand for the arrival of the Oliphant family?
Amongst this morning’s speakers will be John Olsen, the Premier of South
Australia, and the current Governor of South Australia, Sir Eric Neal.
JD DR HARRY MEDLIN, Master of Ceremonies Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome. The members of the Oliphant family who are here today are Sir Mark’s
daughter, Vivienne Wilson, with Keith Powell, her son, Michael, and his wife Peppi,
Sir Mark’s daughter-in-law, Monica Oliphant, and her children, Michelle Oliphant,
Katherine Oliphant with her husband, Tony Wright, and Sir Mark’s great-grandchild,
Hannah. Well, I taught both Monica and her late husband Michael, Sir Mark’s son,
here in Adelaide. Sir Mark and I had many contacts over the years, but I mention
only two, and both were during centenaries. The first was in 1974, the year of the
centenary of this great university, and in the middle of Sir Mark’s term as Governor.
He attended many, if not all, of the formal occasions that ran from March through to
October in that year. The second was in 1986, the centenary of the appointment of
Sir William Bragg, later Nobel laureate, together with his son, Sir Laurence Bragg,
as the Elder Professor of Mathematics in Experimental Physics, with the
appointment dating from the 1st of March 1886. Sir Mark and I attended the
centenary lectures in this great hall by Professors Frank Close, Freeman Dyson and
Paul Davies, and by Stephen Bragg, grandson of Sir William. Well, having
graduated as he did, in 1923, with first class honours in Physics, and having worked
as a demonstrator with Professor Sir Kerr Grant in 1926 and 1927, Sir Mark was our
oldest living graduate and our oldest living former staff member. Ladies and
gentlemen, I welcome all of the distinguished guests, together with all friends and
colleagues here and elsewhere today. The order of today’s ceremony is as shown in
the program. The first tribute today is to be given by the Honourable John Olsen,
Premier of South Australia. Mr Olsen.
THE HONOURABLE JOHN OLSEN, Premier of South Australia The Oliphant
family and descendants, His Excellency, Sir Eric Neal, Lady Neal, Leader of the
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Opposition, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen. Born in the year of Federation, Marcus
Laurence Elwin Oliphant was, like his nation, within sight of the Centenary when he
passed away last month. He lived through an extraordinary century, the likes of
which the world had never seen before, and few people could have appreciated the
fact as fully as Sir Mark Oliphant himself. He was a man who embraced progress
and placed himself at the vanguard of change. And what changes he saw! He lived
through the century that took us from dreams of flight to the moon, from the box
brownie to the digital handicam, from the Overland Telegraph to the World Wide
Web, and from trench warfare to the nuclear madness of mutually assured
destruction. Sir Mark Oliphant regretted some applications of science, particularly
his role in developing the atom bomb, but that was what made this brilliant scientist
even more laudable. He embraced change, but warned of its consequences. He
encouraged progress, but realised the need for conservation. He loved science, but
he never valued it above humanity.
Growing up in Adelaide in the Adelaide Hills, Mark Oliphant had the benefit of a
strong family life. Mark and his brothers attended public school. His father was a
dedicated public servant, and his mother worked hard to maintain a good home life.
He studied hard because he wanted to learn, and what a lesson he then leaves for the
rest of us an honest toiler from a school in the Adelaide Hills, who worked hard
and made the most of his talents forging a career at the forefront of world scientific
endeavours.
As a youth, Mark Oliphant endured the frustration and disappointment applying
for jobs and missing out. He worked hard at jobs he didn’t enjoy, but he kept at it
and he kept his sights high. This was a man who had the self-confidence to believe
he could be a nuclear physicist, yet he had the humility to spend his days stacking
books onto library shelves so he could pay his way through university. At this very
university, the young Oliphant’s enthusiasm for learning grew. He allowed himself
to be inspired by people around him. His biographers cite a debate the young Mark
Oliphant witnessed involving the great geologist and Antarctic explorer, Sir Douglas
Mawson. And what a momentous night that seems now Mawson and Oliphant in
the same room here at the university, discussing, no doubt, the great theories of the
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day. Of course, at that time Mawson was a hero, Oliphant unknown, but now
together they stand as scientific heroes of Adelaide, Australia, the world.
In his early twenties, Oliphant left Adelaide with his young wife, Rose, to take up
a scholarship at Cambridge, joining the world’s leading laboratory in experimental
physics. And even today, in the post-nuclear age, many of us are mystified by the
term ‘nuclear physics’. It seems so difficult to some of us, so abstract, so
incomprehensible. It certainly holds a beauty that attracted, however, Mark
Oliphant. He and his colleagues were investigating the very building blocks of
matter. Their immensely challenging quest was aimed simply at discovering how
the substance of the universe was structured. It is a matter of supreme irony that this
valiant quest to understand the beauty of creation produced the knowledge that
unleashed history’s most destructive weapon. And, whatever we might think of
nuclear weapons, there is no doubting the worthiness of Mark Oliphant’s wartime
efforts, first with the development of radar, and then with the creation, the bomb.
Oliphant worked in teams dedicated to bring about world peace and saving lives,
and whilst he personally carried in part the shame of Hiroshima like an albatross for
some of his life, but while there will always be debate about how the bomb was
used, history judges the actions of Oliphant and his colleagues well. They fulfilled a
need to develop technology ahead of others. And, importantly in Oliphant’s case, he
spent the rest of his life campaigning against the proliferation of nuclear weapons
and promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology.
Coaxed out of retirement in 1971, Sir Mark became the state’s first locally-born
Governor. Determined to express his views, he spoke out on issues such as religion,
conservation, and behind the scenes he disagreed with many issues with the
government of the day. But he was immensely popular with the public, who
respected his integrity, his compassion. I remember on occasion him visiting Yorke
Peninsula as Governor when I was Mayor, and those trips into the country were
certainly welcomed, and no-one could miss his presence with that shock of wispy,
white hair. And somehow you felt he looked exactly as a nuclear physicist should.
He was always dignified, yet a man of the people. On one occasion, upon their
retirement, he invited his chauffeur and butler from Government House to a formal
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dinner at Government House. He insisted that they arrive at the front door and
receive the full treatment. It was a touching and egalitarian demonstration of
gratitude to his staff.
Sir Mark Oliphant’s love for his home state survived till the end. He remained
until his passing the Patron of the Investigator Science Centre, a role ideally suited
to one so dedicated to science and education. And to honour that ideal and to
permanently commemorate this great South Australian, a main gallery at the
Investigator Science Centre is to be named ‘The Mark Oliphant Gallery’. This
gesture has the support of the Centre and Sir Mark’s family, which has already
offered some personal memorabilia to be displayed, and this will create a tangible
link between the young, enquiring minds of the future and the great experimental
physicist of our past.
Throughout his life, Mark Oliphant thought deeply about religion. His views on
traditional Christianity often caused a stir. ‘Yes, I’ve got a feeling that man is
immortal,’ he once mused, ‘but in the sense that what he achieved lives on after him.
This, I believe, is a far greater immortality than sitting on a stool and playing a
harp.’ So we know today, perhaps, Sir Mark is not playing a harp. Perhaps instead
he is finally being filled in on all the secrets surrounding the structure of the
universe. Certainly judged on his own criteria, he has attained an immortality of
sorts. What he achieved lives on, and his memory will remain a source of
inspiration and fine example to all of us. Thank you.
DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by His Excellency, Sir Eric
Neal, Governor of South Australia. His Excellency is also, on this occasion,
representing Her Majesty the Queen. Your Excellency.
HIS EXCELLENCY SIR ERIC NEAL, Governor of South Australia The
Honourable John Olsen, Premier of South Australia, The Honourable Mike Rann,
Leader of the Opposition, the Oliphant family, ladies and gentlemen. By any
standards of judgment, Sir Mark Oliphant was a great Australian. He was an
exceptionally gifted physicist, an inspiring and inspired leader of his fellow citizens,
a remarkable builder of scientific apparatus on which some of the awe-inspiring
advances in forefront physics depended throughout the 20th century.
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Sir Mark was the first-born son of a public servant and his school teacher wife in
Adelaide nearly 99 years ago. He was short-sighted and partially deaf, and had to
work part-time as a library assistant to raise money for his university education.
Yet, when he died, his honours and decorations filled an entire page of his
biography published 20 years ago. Among other distinctions, he had become a
Companion of the Order of Australia, a Knight of the British Empire, a Fellow of
the Royal Society, the co-founder and Foundation President of the Australian
Academy of Science and the recipient of honorary doctorates from eight of the
world’s leading universities. By the age of 32, he had become one of the key
members of the world-famous team of 34 atom-splitting scientists which Britain’s
greatest physicist, Lord Rutherford, had gathered around him at the Cavendish
Laboratories in Cambridge. As Professor of Physics at Birmingham University
during the late 1930s, Mark Oliphant directed research which led to the two major
war-winning inventions of radar and the atomic bomb. He then led a British team of
100 scientists to the United States, where their work was crucial in helping the
Americans develop the world’s first two atomic bombs. But his idealism and
humanity recoiled in horror at the appalling loss of life which occurred when the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were virtually destroyed by those bombs.
What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki altered Sir Mark’s perception of human
priorities. From 1945 he committed himself passionately to the twin causes of peace
and environmentalism. In 1955 his public statements and speeches on these subjects
attracted the attention of a kindred spirit, the famous philospher and humanitarian,
Bertrand Russell. Russell decided that the Australian should be invited to join other
men in the founding of a group of peace lovers known as the ‘Pugwash Movement’.
Founding members included Albert Einstein and seven other Nobel prizewinners.
For more than 20 years their annual meetings influenced world opinion and attracted
the specific attention of President JF Kennedy and the Russian leader, Nikita
Khrushchev.
Beyond his own discipline of physics, Sir Mark Oliphant’s major contribution to
Australian public life was his unwavering commitment to freedom of thought and
speech and to the ideal of international friendship. He had style, presence and great
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dignity whenever he spoke out strongly on public issues. I am told that, at the same
time, he was boisterous and fun-loving, and loved a good joke. He enjoyed being
provocative and challenging what he perceived to be entrenched views. The young,
especially, loved him for this, and he had a profound influence on Australian science
as a communicator and facilitator. In South Australia, the annual Oliphant Science
Prizes are contested by more than three thousand students at thirty or more schools.
Sir Mark was proud of this. The contests helped him discharge his sense of
obligation to society.
I am sad that I did not know Sir Mark personally as well as I would have wished,
but I do have a very happy memory of him dining with us at Government House.
The table setting included the Oliphant candlesticks, for we have at the house six
simply-designed candlesticks made of sterling silver by my distinguished
predecessor himself. One of Sir Mark’s hobbies was the crafting of jewellery and
other valuables with the help of a small lathe. He presented the candlesticks to
Government House as a memento of his own service there with his beloved wife,
Rose.
I also enjoy the story of how one of Sir Mark’s houseguests once broke the heel
of her shoe. Lady Oliphant told her to leave it outside her room and assured her it
would be quickly repaired. It was. And when the guest expressed pleasure at the
result, she was embarrassed to learn that the Governor himself had taken it out to his
garden shed and mended it for her. It was a spontaneous expression of his personal
humility.
May I leave you with a quotation from another of Sir Mark’s guests at
Government House, the late Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck. ‘To feel the inner
grace of Oliphant,’ Sir Paul wrote in 1981, ‘one has to see him in the family circle
and read his book on Lord Rutherford. Living in his home I came to know better the
true, the simple, the genuine man that he is, as well as to see more clearly the great
man who is the historic figure.’ I myself fear it may be a long time before Australia
sees his like again. Thank you.
DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by the Honourable Mike
Rann, Leader of the Opposition. Mr Rann.
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THE HONOURABLE MIKE RANN, Leader of the Opposition Members of the
Oliphant family, Your Excellency, Premier, distinguished guests. Today we pay
tribute to Sir Mark, not just because he helped change life on this planet, but because
he had the conscience to question the ways in which he changed it. In a lifetime
nearly as long as the century he graced, he added his name immortally to the other
South Australians of the sciences Bragg, Mawson, Lord Florey, who gave us
penicillin, and lately Basil Hetzel, whose work on iodine deficiencies has lessened
the pain of the world. We need more great thinkers-in-residence in this city in the
park.
Sir Mark Oliphant helped split the atom and thus was a co-pioneer with Einstein,
Rutherford and Oppenheimer of that nuclear energy that changed the life yet
darkened the dreams of half a century of mankind. He was both co-author and
witness to the horrors of nuclear war. But, like Einstein, he was a man whose
conscience troubled him, and his passionate sense of social justice prevailed. Sir
Mark used his scientific expertise to help end a war, but he also saw the horror he
helped unleash, brighter than a thousand suns. He knew what Oppenheimer meant
when he said at Los Alamos, quoting from Hindu scripture, ‘Behold, I am become
death, the shatterer of worlds.’ Sir Mark thereafter fought for world peace and an
end to the arms race which took humanity to the precipice. Sir Mark sought to tame
the dark angel of nuclear power and make it useful, beneficial and domesticated, no
longer the all-devouring beast, and this became the great cause of the last half of his
long life, the strongest advocate against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Sir Mark was a radical, a progressive thinker, a doer in a world of dreamers and
procrastinators. He was not afraid to challenge orthodoxy, or to unsettle the comfort
zones of the comfortable, to speak out and not hold his peace. He was a figure of
authority who challenged authority. He knew that ivory towers must be shaken for
humanity to move forward.
Sir Mark earned the admiration of Don Dunstan, who first submitted his name to
Buckingham Palace as his choice for Governor some years before his eventual
appointment, but there were concerns. This was a man that lesser minds found
unsettling. But these were the ’60s. The Cold War meant that peacemakers like
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Mark Oliphant were held to be suspect, troublemakers, romantics who failed to
understand that the world order depended on the power of the few to destroy
everything at the push of a button. So, despite his involvement in the Manhattan
Project, Sir Mark was denied a visa to enter the United States. His idealism cost
him dearly. The mood soon changed, however, and in 1971 Don Dunstan finally
got his way and Sir Mark was appointed Governor. But he was a different kind of
Governor a head of state who never failed to speak out provocatively,
controversially, fearlessly, rattling cages sometimes sharply, but many times with
a kind, gentle, mischievous wit tinged by eccentricity. By doing so, Sir Mark wrote
himself into our history and our hearts as a great Governor, a great activist, a great
and much-loved South Australian. Sir Mark’s work in the field of education is still
paying dividends. He knew, as all of us should know, that it’s education that
matters as our social as well as economic imperative, and he was a mentor to many.
He was a founding father of a great university, the ANU, and in many ways it was
made in his image, questioning, probing, challenging, asking ‘Why?’ and also ‘Why
not?’
Sir Mark Oliphant was a restless spirit. He reached the top in so many areas,
from scientific research and education to working to end the War and then fighting
for an enduring peace, to public service in its purest sense, and to our environment.
But it was as a teacher, and as a teacher by example, that he most changed us,
touched us and moved us. In the past two years we’ve lost some great South
Australians Don Dunstan, Dame Roma Mitchell, Archbishop James Gleeson and
now Sir Mark. They all live on in our memories but, more importantly, each leaves
enduring legacies and a persistent challenge for us all to move forward, to do better,
to help others, to make a difference, to make our own mark, and to believe, like
them, that public good is possible and within our reach. They believed that to do
otherwise would be to fail in our duty to ourselves and to each other. Sir Mark did
not fail in his duty; he fulfilled it charmingly, angrily, tenaciously and in doing
so he enhanced and illuminated our lives.
I offer my deepest sympathies to the Oliphant family and to all his friends.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE A: TAPE 1 SIDE B
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DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, the Adelaide Chamber Singers,
under their musical director, Carl Crossin, will now perform two pieces, both of
which have been requested by the family. They are Ave verum corpus by William
Bird and Guten nacht by Johann Sebastian Bach.
(Music.)
The Adelaide Chamber Singers.
DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by one of our former
students, now Professor Eric Weigold, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies
of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the Australian
National University, Canberra. Professor Weigold.
PROFESSOR ERIC WEIGOLD, Australian National University Members of the
Oliphant family, Your Excellency, distinguished guests. We are here to celebrate the
life of one of Australia’s most distinguished sons, one who was a notable figure on
the national and international scene throughout the 20th century. As a successor to
Sir Mark Oliphant as Director of his research school at the Australian National
University, I would like to tell you a little about his career and the impact he had on
Australian science, particularly physics, during his long and distinguished life.
Sir Mark was one of a small cluster of outstandingly creative physicists who, by
shaping nuclear physics in its infancy, were assigned by fate to crucial roles in the
Second World War. He was one of the most distinguished members of Lord
Rutherford’s Cambridge School of Nuclear Physics and, as such, one of the last
direct links with that Golden Age of elementary particle physics. Always clever
with his hands, Mark Oliphant supported his early studies at Adelaide University by
working in the library in the Physics Department. After completing his honours
degree, he worked on surface tension with Dr Roy Burton, and together they
published a paper in Nature, the first scientific publication to bear Sir Mark’s name.
Some three decades later, Roy Burton also taught me physics in the same
department.
Sir Mark was greatly stimulated by a visit to Adelaide in 1925 of the New
Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, then Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in
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Cambridge. After Lord Rutherford’s visit, Sir Mark was determined to work in his
laboratory, an aim he achieved when he won the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship. He
arrived in Cambridge in 1927. Sir Mark’s greatest personal triumphs in science
came in the 1930s, when his friendship with Lord Rutherford was at its height and
when, with the departure of James Chadwick, he became Assistant Director of the
laboratory, then the world’s leading centre for experimental nuclear physics. In the
course of research on the effects of impact of high-speed ions on surfaces, he
showed consummate ability in designing and constructing apparatus. Clever with
his hands, as I’ve already mentioned, he was an excellent machinist and instrument
maker. In this way he radically raised the Cavendish Laboratory’s standards of
techniques. His love of working with his hands continued throughout his life. He
was still busy making things on his own lathe in his late 90s.
Sir Mark’s greatest achievement at the Cavendish was to show that, on the
collision of two light nuclei, one could produce a heavier nucleus, or atom. This
was the first example of fusion. At this time, around 1933, Lord Rutherford was
arguing that the notion of useful energy from nuclear interactions was and I quote
‘Moonshine’. He thought that the very high energy needed to initiate a reaction
would result in some loss of energy. Of course, what Sir Mark had shown in his
experiments was how two lighter hydrogen atoms could fuse to form heavier ones
with the release of energy. This is the source of energy in our sun, and in the stars.
Later, it also led to the development of thermonuclear weapons. It also forms the
basis for the production of fusion energy, still the Holy Grail of energy research.
Sir Mark had done outstanding work with Lord Rutherford, but he wanted to run
his own show. Rutherford was infuriated when Sir Mark took the Chair of Physics
at Birmingham University in 1937. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society. At Birmingham Sir Mark set to work to design and build a new
laboratory for nuclear physics. This project was interrupted by the War. His
laboratory was, however, responsible for one of the most important scientific
inventions of the War: the cavity magnetron. Developed under Sir Mark’s
direction, it produced high-power centimetre wavelength radiation. This invention
transformed radar. It made possible the development of an apparatus that enabled
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narrow beams of radio waves to be produced. Transmitted in pulses of concentrated
power, these radio waves could seek out ships, submarines and aircraft. This radar,
installed in aircraft, played a decisive part in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. It
directed the blind firing of British warships, it guided the night fighters to the
German bombers, it enabled Bomber Command for the first time to identify its
targets with reasonable certainty, and it helped the US Navy to intercept Japanese
supply ships and ultimately to destroy the Japanese fleet. A sample magnetron, the
core of this radar, was taken to the United States in the autumn of 1940 and
described by the US publication Scientist at war as the most important contribution
to the reverse Lend Lease.
Two German physicists, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, were also working in
Birmingham at that time, but were unable to participate in the secret radar work
because of their nationality. Instead they worked on nuclear fission and the
practicality of constructing an atom bomb. They calculated that the critical mass of
the fission bomb could be as little as a few pounds of separated fissile material. Sir
Mark recognised the importance of this conclusion and was able to introduce their
work to senior defence officials in Whitehall, and to convince them that atomic
weapons were practical. In 1941 and 1943 he went on a mission to America.
Through his friendship with the leading US scientists and his powerful personality,
he helped in the reopening of the collaborations on nuclear research. From 1943 he
worked at Berkeley as part of the Manhattan Project. Like others who were also
involved, he was appalled by the devastation and loss of human life caused by the
atom bomb when it was finally used against Japan to end the War.
In 1946 he returned to Birmingham to build a new type of accelerator. It was to
produce hydrogen projectiles of energy more than a billion electron volts. His
mission was to investigate at deepest level of understanding the mysterious
properties of matter. At that time, a new national research university was being
planned in Canberra. Sir Mark accepted an invitation to join a group of senior
academics, including Keith Hancock and Howard Florey, to provide academic
advice for this new university. These advisers were all offered appointments as
directors of the planned research schools, but only Sir Mark accepted a post, as
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Director of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering. He returned
to his native Australia in 1950. Florey had predicted that, on his arrival, there would
be a hole in the ground and a lot of broken promises. Half the prophecy was more
than correct. There were two such holes, one at the new laboratories, the other at
the site of the intended Oliphant residence. Sir Mark continued to direct research at
the school for thirteen years. He began a broad program in the physical sciences
expanding the work of his research school to include astronomy, mathematics and
geophysics. He converted a bare patch of ground into a creative and expanding
school whose more than 600 doctoral graduates have been extremely successful and
continue to play crucial roles in Australia and overseas. I am an early graduate of
that school, and it is where I first met Sir Mark. The school became a major centre
of Australian research and post-graduate training, and it gave birth to new research
schools in earth sciences, information sciences engineering, astronomy and
astrophysics and mathematical sciences.
In 1954 he founded and became the first President of the Australian Academy of
Science. He was largely responsible for the famous and futuristic copper dome of
the Academy building on the edge of the Australian National University campus,
and saw the Academy become one of the most élite scientific institutions in the
world. During his Governorship of South Australia, Government House was a
regular host to visiting physicists and Nobel laureates.
Sir Mark was a great leader of science, able to inspire his students by his
enthusiastic outlook on the world. He was an ebullient and outspoken man, a great
talker with much of importance to say. I acknowledge and salute him for the very
high international profile that his research school in Canberra has long enjoyed. Our
continued success is directly attributable to him as its founder. In particular, I pay
tribute to his integrity and his great intelligence on matters by no means limited to
the fields of science. These were the hallmarks of an honourable and great
Australian, to whom I and my colleagues owe a great debt. On behalf of all of Sir
Mark’s colleagues in science, I extend to his family our deepest sympathy. Thank
you.
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DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by the Honourable Dr Barry
Jones, one of the most all-round accomplished of Australian citizens of our time and
Minister for Science from 1983 to 1990. Dr Jones.
THE HONOURABLE DR BARRY JONES, former Minister for Science
Excellency, Premier, Opposition Leader, Vivian and family, friends. Apart from his
contribution to physics, Sir Mark Oliphant was an outstanding example of a public
intellectual. Public intellectuals are becoming an endangered species at a time when
Australian research is becoming less speculative and more instrumental. Research
managers are preoccupied with the bottom line, and some universities see
themselves as trading corporations. Mark Oliphant contributed to community debate
here an overseas on great issues, many of them outside his professional expertise but
to which he contributed his analytical gift, wide experience, passion and compassion.
Public intellectuals were familiar phenomena with his exact contemporaries and
those of a generation or two before. Now, in an age of super-specialisation, being a
public intellectual is deeply unfashionable and may, in fact, be a professional
obstacle. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North-Whitehead, Julian Huxley,
JBS Haldane, JD Bernal, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, J Robert Oppenheimer, Irwin
Schroedinger and Werner Heisenberg were outstanding examples of public
intellectuals who were widely reported and had an international following. In
Australia, McFarlane Burnett, Jean McNamara and Ian Clunies Ross, all born in
1899, all Victorians, notable scientists two in medicine, one in veterinary science
were public intellectuals arguing passionately on a diverse number of major issues.
Mark Oliphant was born in Adelaide in nineteen hundred and one, two years later.
In 1991 I nominated, as one of a group of seventeen public intellectuals in
Australia, outside of politics and the creative arts that was to allow for why Gough
Whitlam and Gareth weren’t on the list who argued in and outside of their
disciplines, and who could be guaranteed to get a run in the media when they
sounded off. I expressed some concern that the average age of these public
intellectuals was rather high, and that although we had more academics on the
public payroll than in any time in their history, many of them kept their heads down.
And very few of the seventeen were on the sunny side of fifty. Survivors included
17
Sir Davis McCaughey, former Governor of Victoria, Sir Zelman Cohen, twice a
Vice-Chancellor and then Governor-General, Professor Peter Karmel, economist
and promoter of education and the arts, Donald Hall, an iconoclastic thinker and
polemicist, Sir Gustav Nossel, Burnett’s disciple and successor, still making a high
profile contribution in many areas. So are Professor David Pennington, former
Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, and Adelaide’s eminent economic
historian Hugh Stretton.
I was familiar with Mark Oliphant’s name and ideas from 1949, when he made a
valuable contribution to a textbook about the challenges of the atomic age. This
symposium, set for Matriculation at Melbourne High School, including worthies
such as Bertrand Russell, Jacob Bronowsky, Sir George Thomson and Niels Bohr.
Mark Oliphant was understandably preoccupied with the potential impact of atomic
power, especially as few, if any, politicians, understood the full implications of
nuclear weaponry. As the Cold War became increasingly frigid, the danger of a
nuclear arms race and potential catastrophe seemed to be a major threat to human
life. Peace and nuclear disarmament were the causes that dominated his
contribution to public life, and as a major contribution to the Manhattan Project
codename for the development of the U-235 bombs in the US his personal anxiety
about atomic weapons was palpable. And, as Sir Eric pointed out, he’d made a
fundamental discovery which actually solved a major problem in the process that led
to the development of the hydrogen bomb, and he felt even worse about that. He
was very unlucky not to have received a Nobel prize in physics. He took an active
role in the Pugwash Movement, as has been mentioned initiated, actually, by a
professor, later Sir Joseph Rotblat, but taken up by Bertrand Russell, Einstein and
others attended its first meeting in July 1957 and many later ones.
Religion was a continuing influence. Brought up in a Christian family, he was
not religious in the conventional sense, but he shared the conviction of his friend,
Bishop Ernest Bergman, who was also not religious in the conventional sense, that
religion could be a profound force for peace and expressing universal values. He
also recognised that it could be profoundly divisive, as Northern Ireland and the
18
former Yugoslavia demonstrate. He also asserted that, while science was able to
answer many of the ‘how?’ questions, it was unable to answer the ‘why?’ questions.
He’d grown up with a conventional acceptance of White Australia, but gradually
changed position and was deeply committed to non-discrimination in immigration,
tolerance generally and respect for the pluralistic values of multiculturalism. He
was passionately committed to opening up education to ensure that natural talent
was nurtured and that poverty, remoteness and race were not barriers. He was
deeply concerned about protecting the environment against what he saw as the
predatory activities of developers. He spoke out passionately about a proposal for a
golf course at Wilpena Pound, and some other developments. I remember his
dismay at the huge burning off of the Amazonian rain forest an act of almost
Queensland-like dimensions in the 1980s. He was concerned about the
destruction of Australia’s native forests and growing (stumbles on word) senility?
(laughter) Well, that too! salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin. He was
enthusiastic about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, proposing the use of
hydrogen for fuel and urging solar energy, including solar vehicles. He was deeply
concerned about the risk of global population explosion and deeply critical of Pope
Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae of 1968, pronouncing against artificial birth
control. He was no fan of Pope John Paul II in this particular area, at least. He was
also concerned that population growth in Australia, especially in cities, would
impose unacceptable stress on the environment and our biota. He was long ahead of
his time, like his near contemporaries Nugget Coombs and William Charles
Wentworth IV, in supporting recognition of Aboriginal land rights. He was a strong
supporter of affirmative action and often pointed out that his home state of South
Australia had led the way in granting a franchise for women in 1894, but he saw that
there was a long way to go. He was a cautious civil libertarian who disliked
censorship in principle but was deeply disturbed in practice by pornography,
especially involving children or cruelty. He was deeply opposed to the death
penalty. He thought that all wars were obscene and opposed the Vietnam War as
part of a general category.
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Science funding. I well remember a demonstration in Canberra which I
actually, although I was the Minister, paradoxically, had some hand in orchestrating
(laughter) at the opening of the National Science Centre in 1988, in which a
number of Australia’s most eminent scientists, including a handful of octogenarian
and septuagenarian knights, waved placards and possibly even fists so that Bob
Hawke could be aware that our scientific base was slipping away and needed more
funding. Mark Oliphant was one of that distinguished group. Extra funding was
provided in 1989. No economic rationalist, he deeply deplored the failure of
Australian government and investors to provide appropriate support for Australian
industry and innovation. He cast his last vote for ‘yes’ in the Republican
Referendum on the 6th November 1999. He thought it was time.
Mark Oliphant was both Australian patriot and passionate internationalist, a
complex character who had moods of optimism and deep pessimism, exhilaration
and frustration. He was preoccupied about the human condition, the relief of
suffering, the conquest of ignorance and prejudice. He always thought globally. He
was the last survivor of that great period in physics when Ernest Rutherford was at
the Cavendish Laboratory. He was sustained throughout by a loving family life.
Australia is very greatly in his debt.
DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, I now invite Ms Vivienne Wilson,
Mr Michael Wilson, Mrs Monica Oliphant, Ms Katherine Oliphant and Ms Michelle
Oliphant to come on stage, whereupon Ms Wilson will speak on behalf of Sir Mark’s
children and then her son, Mr Michael Wilson, will speak on behalf of the
grandchildren.
So members of the Oliphant family now making their way to the front of
Bonython Hall to represent various generations of the Oliphant family.
JD MS VIVIENNE WILSON, daughter of Sir Mark Oliphant Your Excellencies,
Premier, Leader of the Opposition, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to
thank Premier Olsen for this opportunity to celebrate my father’s life. I would also
like to thank Swita Arwon of the Premier’s Department and my son Michael for all
the work they have put into organising this occasion.
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I am going to speak about my father, Sir Mark Oliphant, on behalf of his children,
and I also include here my brother Michael’s widow, Monica Oliphant, a member of
our family my father loved dearly and whose scientific achievements he was very
proud of. My parents had three children. Their only biological child, Geoffrey,
became ill with meningitis four weeks before his third birthday. This was in 1933,
before the days of antibiotics, and Geoffrey died within 24 hours of the onset of his
illness. It was a terrible tragedy for my parents, and one they never got over. My
parents could have no more children of their own. Their doctor suggested adoption
as an alternative.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B: TAPE 2 SIDE A
So, as many of you know, my brother Michael and I were our parents’ adopted
children. In those days, adoption meant complete separation from one’s birth
family, denied the right by the authorities to any information whatever about one’s
birth parents and with very little likelihood of ever making contact with any
members of one’s biological family. This was certainly the case with Michael and
me, and I can speak from our personal experience. Being cut off forever from your
birth family is a lifelong grief, something which affects you profoundly your entire
life, and you never get over those deep feelings of loss.
Our birth fathers were men of their time. When the women to whom they were
not married conceived us, those men abandoned our mothers, who had no alternative
but to part with us, but we were fortunate in the father who chose us as his children.
We couldn’t have had a better father than the one who brought us up. Fair, kind,
generous and loving, as far as I can remember he never once chastised or punished
us. I’m not going to say that he was a perfect human being. I, along with many of
you here today, know that he wasn’t. He was impulsive and temperamental, he had
a tendency to ride roughshod over those who disagreed with him, he was hopeless
with money and he uprooted his family many times with never a thought of how it
might affect them.
Dad was, above all, a family man. Like most men of his generation, he spent long
hours at work. He really loved his work, but also, when my brother and I were
young, there was a war on and scientists were seconded to the effort and winning the
21
war was paramount. Unlike the fathers of many of my friends, pubs, clubs, sport or
lodge were not for him. He partook fully in the household chores and all other
family activities. He cooked and washed up and he could fix anything, from a
broken doll to a broken washing machine. He read us stories and did magic things
for my childhood birthday parties, and he took us on picnics which he really didn’t
enjoy. We all sat on a rug on the ground and he sat in the car. (laughter) Our father
always encouraged us in our quest for knowledge. He responded to our questions
about the world around us by showing us how to look things up. He taught us how
to use atlases, dictionaries, encyclopædias and reference books. We were fortunate
to be in a household surrounded by books. He gave me my first dictionary,
thesaurus and complete works of Shakespeare, all of which, despite many moves, I
still have.
As I was growing up, I was probably not fully aware that my father was ahead of
his time in his attitude to equality of the sexes. I was not brought up to think that
just because I was a girl I couldn’t ride a bike, climb a tree, hit a ball or achieve at
school. I was given the freedom to do all the things my brother did.
After living in Britain for 23 years, my parents returned to Australia in 1950, my
father having earlier been encouraged by Ben Chifley to commit himself to the
fledgling Australian National University in what was then a rather primitive
Canberra. I was twelve years old and I attended the local co-educational state high
school. Here I became aware that many of the clever girls in my class were denied
the chance of a tertiary education because their families’ often limited resources
were reserved for their less bright and lazier brothers. That was an attitude that
never existed in my family. My family believed that girls and boys had the right to
the same educational opportunities, and that if you qualified for university entry and
you wanted to go, you had an equal right to go. My father was very proud of the
fact that both his children were university graduates.
My father was a good and faithful husband to my mother. They met as teenagers
and were married for nearly 63 years. When my mother became ill in 1984, my
father willingly and lovingly looked after her. He said that she’d looked after him
for 60 years and always done what he wanted, gone where he wanted, and now it
22
was his turn. In the three years my mother was in a nursing home, my father spent
hours with her almost every day, and was with her when she died.
My father was an extremely good father and a wonderful grandfather.
Circumstances that neither my brother Michael’s widow, Monica, nor I could have
predicted resulted in us bringing up our three children as single parents an
undeservedly denigrated sector of Australian society. Because of this, my father
was in many ways both grandfather and father to his three grandchildren, and they
have grown up to be exceptional young people who were very special to their
grandfather, and of whom he was very, very proud.
What will I remember of my father in recent years? He came back to Canberra
from Adelaide after my mother’s death in 1987 and lived in a granny flat we had
built onto my house. My father, my son and I lived as a three-generation family,
supporting one another in various ways. That is not to say that it was always easy
and harmonious. It wasn’t. Michael and I remember the robust conversations
around the dinner table over the past thirteen years. My father always liked to
provoke people into argument and lively discussion, and with members of the
family it was no different. For example, as you may know, with a few exceptions,
my father was contemptuous of politics and politicians and would loudly proclaim
these views. It mattered not to him that my livelihood over the past 25 years has
been involved in the provision of information to Federal Members of Parliament, or
that Michael for some years had political aspirations. And Dad was forthright in his
criticism of Michael’s chosen field of university study, political science. ‘Not fit to
be called a science,’ he proclaimed. (laughter) ‘Why don’t you study something
useful!’ (louder laughter) Well into his nineties my father enjoyed a spirited
discussion. I think one could say he wasn’t a person who was prepared to grow old
gracefully.
His mind remained sharp. When he was 95 he was asked his advice on what it
took to lead a fulfilling life, even into his 90s. His succinct reply: ‘Retain
curiosity.’ And I think that pretty well sums up his response to life.
Until the death of my father I had never been closely involved in a family death.
My brother Michael died of cancer in 1971 aged 35 when my son Michael was only
23
a few weeks old, and because of poor health I was unable to travel from Canberra to
Melbourne to attend my brother’s funeral. My mother died in January 1987 when I
was walking in the Grand Canyon, and by the time the news reached me the funeral
had been held and I had no chance to be part of it. So the death of my father is the
only family death I have been fully involved in, and I am very grateful I was able to
be. In recent years I feared that he, too, might die while I was away and that I
wouldn’t be able to say goodbye properly and grieve fully for him. As he and I had
planned, the family was able to have a small, simple, quiet farewell for him before
we had to share our loss with the rest of the nation.
About a week after our simple family funeral on the 17th
July, I received a folder
of material from the Canberra crematorium. I was asked to notify them about what
I wanted done with the remains of Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant. That really hit
me between the eyes. Was I to think that all that remained of this larger than life
person who was my father was a handful of ashes? But very quickly I thought, ‘Of
course not.’ What remain are the memories and the photographs, but also, in my
father’s case, much more than that. Organisations, particularly in South Australia,
that bear his name, such as the South Australian Science Teachers’ Association
Mark Oliphant Awards, the Flinders Medical Centre Foundation, Sir Mark Oliphant
Round Table, the Mark Oliphant Conservation Park in the Adelaide Hills and Mount
Oliphant in the Flinders Ranges an area of great spiritual significance to my
father. Then there are all the organisations of which he was Patron, and great
institutions like the Australian National University and the Australian Academy of
Science world class institutions which probably wouldn’t have got off the ground
without my father’s initiative, energy and commitment. And there’s Stewart
Cockburn and David Ellyard’s excellent biography. And now we are to have the
Mark Oliphant Gallery in the Investigator Science and Technology Center in
Adelaide.
You may ask, ‘Why no state funeral for a favourite South Australian son?’
Because he explicitly forbade it. He often said to me that if I allowed it he would
come back to haunt me. (laughter) That always amused me, coming from one who
didn’t believe in a conventional God and who certainly didn’t believe in life after
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death! He left instructions about what was to happen when he died rather typical
of him, really, instructions from beyond the grave. His instructions about no fuss
when he died illustrated what sort of person my father was. He did enjoy some of
the trappings of Vice-Regal life and did like recognition for his achievements, but he
was basically a humble, simple man who didn’t think he was exceptional or special
just someone who’d been lucky. Included in these final instructions was that there
was to be no memorial service. Well, we defied him on the memorial service bit,
and I’m so glad we did.
Finally, I’d like to share with you his simple thoughts on death, and I quote him:
‘That which is buried in a grave or incinerated in a furnace is but a cast-off vehicle
which has served its purpose. It is not the person.’ Well, it is the person, my father,
whose life we are celebrating today. Thank you.
MR MICHAEL WILSON, grandson of Sir Mark Oliphant Your Excellency, Mr
Premier, Professor Medlin, Professor Weigold, Leader of the Opposition,
distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I speak to you this morning on behalf of
Sir Mark Oliphant’s grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. On my family’s
behalf I would like to thank those who have spoken today for their generous tributes,
and also thank the many other Australians who have expressed their feelings for Sir
Mark in the weeks since his death. It is overwhelmingly moving for us to see that so
many people, from all walks of life, were somehow inspired by him in the same way
that we, his family, were inspired.
My grandfather died on Bastille Day. I think this would have appealed to his
sense of humour and to the revolutionary in his spirit. Although it’s hard to grasp
such time scales, he was born in the year of Federation, which also always seemed
appropriate to me, because this special country, its great potential and the creative
spirit of its people meant so much to him.
Kathy, Michelle and I were extremely privileged to have had our grandfather so
closely involved in all our lives from infancy to adulthood. His strong influence
will always be with us, and I don’t think that it’s any accident that the three of us
now devote our working lives to fields that I think he would have classified in the
category of ‘things that really matter’. Kathy is a very gifted teacher, Michele is a
25
strong and dedicated youth worker and I now work in the environment policy field.
He was also particularly proud of the important work of my Aunt Monica, also a
distinguished scientist in the field of alternative energy.
To us, Grandpa was kind, loving, generous and had a tremendous sense of fun.
He could recite nonsense verse as accurately and easily as he could recite
Shakespeare or the Latin Mass. But especially in our teens and young adulthood he
would challenge us to think about and defend our values and beliefs. He was a
lifelong activist and wanted to see that sort of spirit in his grandchildren. He was
the sort of grandfather you could take along to an anti-nuclear rally, a women’s
rights action or a world peace campaign. This isn’t to say that he always necessarily
agreed with the causes we felt were important, but he loved to see people standing
up for what they believed in. When we were children he seemed to us a large and
vigorous man with a booming, infectious laugh and a playful, mischievous sense of
humour. He would take us for long walks and make up marvellous stories. As
adults, we remember the warmth and generosity of his nature, his concern for our
happiness and many long evenings with him in deep discussion or gentle reflection
about his life and the people he had known.
My grandfather was certainly aware of his place in the world, but his modesty
was genuine and he genuinely believed his achievements were due to luck, more
than intelligence or hard work. He was incredibly loyal to his friends, his staff and
to those who inspired him. It was fascinating to hear him speak about his colleagues
and acquaintances people like Bertrand Russell, Bragg, Bohr, Curie, Einstein,
Lawrence, Cockcroft, Kapitza and, of course, his great mentor, Lord Rutherford.
And there are many people here with us today who inspired him with their strength
of character, talent, leadership and intellect: Clyde Cameron, Lowitje O’Donoghue,
Clemens Leske, Beryl Kimber, Barry Jones and Barbara Hardy, to name just a few.
I think what inspired me most was his approach to life. He had his share of
tragedy and disappointment. He lost two children and his beloved partner. In his
life he came up against the short-sightedness of decisionmakers and those holding
the purse strings who would frustrate his passionate vision for what was achievable.
Many causes for which he fought were ultimately lost, but he was someone who
26
would come through grief or, when defeated, just shrug his shoulders and move onto
the next challenge with good humour intact and an appreciation of his good fortune.
There are things, I believe, which keep a person young. In my grandfather’s case,
I think it was his passionate, childlike curiosity about the world and how it worked.
His was a life of learning from beginning to end, and as an educator himself, it is not
surprising that education was probably the issue closest to his heart. Towards the
end of his life he was disturbed at what was not happening in science, education and
industry in Australia. He always believed that, as a people, we could make or do
anything, and he despaired at the lack of support governments and industry give to
research and development of outstanding Australian ideas and inventions. When he
was young, Australia’s best and brightest had to go overseas for further study,
because the opportunity for post-graduate research just wasn’t available here. It
disturbed and disappointed him greatly that, in recent years, our best and brightest
are once again leaving our shores because their efforts aren’t sufficiently recognised
or rewarded and the opportunities for them here are limited.
My grandfather taught his children and grandchildren many things: the
importance of honesty and integrity, to always try to do what you believe to be right,
even if it means going against the tide of public opinion. In one of his last
conversations with my cousin Kathy, he said, ‘You and I are lucky because we are
able to do a job that we feel passionate about. I can’t imagine what it would be like
to do something you did not feel that way about. Horrible.’ Thank you.
DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for both your attendance
and your attention, and would you please stand while the family is escorted from the
hall, and would you then all kindly proceed to the adjacent marquee for
refreshments.
(Music recommences.)
So the family is now leaving Bonython Hall and they will make their way through
to the robing room where the grandson, granddaughter indeed, both
granddaughters will give a news conference. The ceremony ending on a very
family note, and earlier a colourful note from the former Science Minister, Mr
Barry Jones, saying that if Sir Mark had been around today as a public
intellectual he may have been deeply unfashionable and may have found that
27
being a public intellectual may have been a professional impediment to him, given
that some universities see themselves now as trading corporations. So, to the
strains of the Zephyr String Quartet, we’ll now leave Bonython Hall at Adelaide
University, having shared the final farewell to a famous son of South Australia,
and return you to normal programming.
TAPE ENDS.