Historical Records of Australian Science最新文献

Stuart Ross Taylor, born and raised in New Zealand, spent most of his career at the Australian National University where his laboratory research focused on trace element geochemistry. He made fundamental contributions toward understanding the composition and evolution of the Moon and Earth, the origin of tektites and solar system evolution. He carried out the first-ever chemical analyses of Apollo 11 lunar samples. Ross Taylor received many awards and honours and was a Companion of the Order of Australia.

Gretna Weste was a remarkable plant pathologist born to Australian parents in the United Kingdom (UK) during World War 1. She studied at the University of Melbourne and was employed in the Forests Commission of Victoria as a ‘temporary typist’ while investigating the preservation of timber logs burnt in the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. Weste returned to the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne briefly before raising a family. Once her children reached high school she returned to the School of Botany as a senior demonstrator, and enrolled as a PhD student part-time to study the cause of take-all disease of wheat. She was awarded a PhD in 1968. After take-all research was claimed by the Faculty of Agriculture in 1970, Gretna’s focus shifted to the newly discovered dieback disease affecting the forests of Western Australia and Victoria. Her research laid the foundations of our understanding of dieback disease, and underpinned the recognition of Phytophthora cinnamomi as a Key Threatening Process under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999). Dr Weste was awarded a DSc in 1983, appointed Member of the Order of Australia in 1989 for her significant service to plant pathology and became an Honorary Member of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society in 1992. Her distinguished career reflects a spirit and resilience that enabled her to overcome, or dodge, a series of gender-based obstacles in research, government and university hierarchies.

Gavin Brown was a distinguished mathematician, born and educated in Scotland. He moved to Australia in 1975 and was a key contributor to the area of harmonic analysis at the University of New South Wales. Gavin’s career saw him become vice-chancellor of both the University of Adelaide and the University of Sydney, before he became the founding president of the Royal Institution of Australia. When Brown died in Adelaide on Christmas Day 2010, we lost a distinguished academic and research mathematician, a huge contributor to Australian education and society and a generous human being with a wonderful sense of humour.

As the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) approaches its thirty-fifth year of operations, we outline the Australian Government’s approach to address extraordinary natural and human mediated biosecurity challenges across our sparsely populated northern shores. NAQS is a concept that is unique worldwide but could be equally well applied in many other island nations dealing with similar circumstances. Key to the success of the NAQS has been long collaborations with biosecurity scientists in the neighbouring nations to the north. Some examples of how these relationships have borne fruit as we tackle regionally important plant diseases are illustrated. We also focus on how the plant pathology component of the program developed and evolved from the early 1990s to 2023.

John Atherton Young (1936–2004) graduated in medicine at the University of Queensland and undertook research in physiology at the Kanematsu Institute in Sydney for which he was awarded his PhD. After postdoctoral studies in Germany, he joined the department of physiology at the University of Sydney, rising to professor, then Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and finally Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Health Sciences. His research on the physiology of epithelial ducts, beginning with those of the kidney but later centring on salivary glands and the pancreas, brought him international recognition as a leader in the field. He made significant contributions to professional societies and was recognised with international and national awards including membership of the Order of Australia. A bronze portrait head of Young by sculptor Dan Lake is displayed in the foyer of the Edward Ford building at the University of Sydney. He was a man of great culture, a witty conversationalist and a great scientist.

Professor Anthony (Tony) George Klein AM, FAA (1935–2021) was an outstanding physicist, university teacher, leader, mentor and science communicator. We recount Tony’s life from his childhood in wartime Romania, his early interest in mathematics, the family’s migration to Australia via Israel in 1953, high school and university education in Melbourne, appointment as a research scientist at the AAEC in Sydney, followed by a distinguished career as an academic, researcher and leader in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne where he retired as Emeritus Professor. The memoir describes Tony Klein’s personal qualities, the influences and experiences shaping his career, his major research contributions and collaborations in the field of neutron optics and neutron interferometry, his service to scientific and medical organisations and recognition by the university, the Australian Academy of Science and the nation. We evaluate Tony Klein’s contribution to science, knowledge and higher education.

Of all the plant diseases that occur in Australia, banana bunchy top disease would rank high on any list of those that have had the greatest impact on society. Bunchy top first became a major problem in Australia during World War 1 in the Tweed Valley in New South Wales, close to the border of Queensland. The Soldier Settlement Scheme was initiated to provide a livelihood for returned soldiers, and the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales was chosen as the site for a new subtropical fruit industry. Physically and psychologically damaged men were encouraged to settle on the land to grow bananas, only to be left in ruins within two years because bunchy top had destroyed their plantations. Bunchy top did not discriminate, and many other well-established growers also ‘went broke’. The cries for assistance from the banana growers made it to the federal Parliament in Melbourne, and a Bunchy Top Investigation Committee was formed in 1924 with funding equally contributed by the New South Wales, Queensland, and Australian Governments. Charles Magee was the full-time plant pathologist appointed to the investigation, and he did most of the research. Most histories of the bunchy top research program follow the written accounts of Magee, but he only provided a narrow perspective. Several of the major hypotheses about the epidemiology of bunchy top disease, such as that it was spread in the plant’s suckers and was vectored by the banana aphid Pentalonia nigronervosa, were established by growers such as William John (aka Jack) Burton Marks well before the Bunchy Top Investigation Committee began. This paper describes the beginnings of the subtropical banana industry, the introduction of bunchy top disease, and efforts by the scientific and farming communities to find a preventative treatment or cure for the disease.

Late Blight, also called Irish blight and brown rot, devastated potato crops in Ireland and countries in Europe in the 1840s, and led to famines, deaths, and the emigration of tens of thousands of poor farmworkers. The outbreaks were blamed on many factors, but finally it was demonstrated that the causal agent was an oomycete (water mould) Phytophthora infestans. The Queensland Government Entomologist and Vegetable Pathologist, Henry Tryon, claimed that he made the first discovery of Late Blight in Australia, on leaves and tubers of potato collected in May 1909 around Brisbane. Within three months, the disease was found in all Australian states. Tryon believed that the Queensland outbreak was caused by Phytophthora-infected planting tubers obtained from Tasmania, which growers and the government in that state initially refused to acknowledge. The Victorian Vegetable Pathologist, Daniel McAlpine, initially agreed with the Tasmanians, but later admitted that he had identified Ph. infestans in Tasmanian potato crops. A herbarium specimen of potato leaves collected in 1900 in Victoria, examined over a century later, was found to be infected with Phytophthora infestans. All the ruckus that ensued after Tryon’s discovery was unnecessary; it was really a matter of where and when.

Rupert Jethro Best (1903–91), working alone at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide between 1934 and 1937, was among the first to purify tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and to propose that it was a complex macromolecule containing protein and another reactive group that was responsible for infectivity of the virus. However, his research was completely overshadowed by that of Wendell Stanley and the duo of Frederick Bawden and Norman (aka Bill) Pirie, working in the United States of America and Great Britain, respectively, to the point where Best is not even mentioned in modern histories of TMV. Many factors have contributed to this lack of recognition for Best. Professor James Prescott, a soil scientist and Best’s supervisor at the Waite Institute, failed to appreciate the significance of his research, leading to critical delays in publication that prevented him from claiming precedence for purifying TMV. When Best’s research was eventually published, it was in Australian journals that were not broadly distributed, resulting in minimal international exposure for his research. The plant virology community within which he worked in Australia was very small and entirely focused on plant disease control, and not concerned with fundamental questions about the composition of viruses. Communication with similarly interested scientists in the Northern Hemisphere was hindered by the great distances involved. In this paper, pioneering research done by Best on TMV is reviewed, and placed in context with that undertaken by Stanley and by Bawden and Pirie, who are best remembered for purifying TMV and characterising its physicochemical properties.

A chance discovery early in 1980 led to a body of work on a virus and a rare species that lasted until the end of the decade. The discovery and characterisation of turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV-Cd) infecting one-fifth of the fragmented population of Cardamine robusta at Mt Kosciuszko, New South Wales, revealed a puzzle that remains unresolved. There is no clear explanation as to why there is a population of TYMV here in the Southern Hemisphere whose sequence has only diverged from Northern Hemisphere TYMV by a few percent. Adding to the mystery is the fact that TYMV-Cd only infects one of the rarest and geographically most restricted species in Australia, while it is surrounded by potential hosts known to be infected in the Northern Hemisphere. This article reviews research published on TYMV at Mt Kosciuszko during the 1980s and 1990s. While human agency cannot be ruled out, indications are that TYMV established without human intervention. The work is set in a historical context and highlights some of the changes around how plant virology is done.