TRIBUTES have poured in from around the world to honour the man who has inspired generations of scientists across Australia and internationally.

 

YOUNG people can have just as much fun pursuing physics and mathematical mysteries as winning the latest computer game challenge, according to Professor Roy Kerr.

 

 

 

 

THE fourteenth day of the third month (3.14) celebrates a remarkable constant of nature - pi. It appears in equations describing the orbits of planets and the structure of DNA.

ACCORDING to Nobel Laureate Professor Douglas Osheroff, advancements in science are seldom made by individuals alone but are the result of the progress of the scientific community.

 

 

 

 

WHEN theoretical physicist Igor Bray and his colleague Andris Stelbovics came up with their groundbreaking theory to explain what happens when electrons collide with atoms, there was a slight hitch.

 

IN 1896, the WA’s first Government Astronomer, William Ernest Cooke, prepared to standardise colonial time using detailed observations of the Sun and the stars.

 

“Time is the ordering of events. That is, it’s not a line along which events are ordered but is rather defined entirely by the order of events. Why events have an order, and why they order can only be visited in one direction is not clear. On a personal level, time is my scarcest resource - I always have more events I could order than I am able to.”  Anglo-Australian Observatory director Matthew Colless

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONCE upon a time, people were happy to regulate their lives around the movement of the Sun, Moon and constellations. These heavenly bodies signalled the start and end of the seasons, when to go to war and which religious ceremonies would be held at particular times of the year.

 

BEND me, shape me … time and space have never been the same since Einstein raised the possibility of physically travelling back and forward in time.

 

MOSQUITOES the world over are flying scared, as the work of PhD student, Stephan Karl of the School of Physics, University of Western Australia took out the “Ondek award” at the ASMR (Australian Society for Medical Research) Medical Research Week Symposium, held on the 4th of June 2009 at Curtin University.

 

TWO researchers from The University of Western Australia – one who co-developed the world’s most precise clock and the other, dedicated to finding ways of repairing ecosystems – have been awarded Australia’s most prestigious research fellowships.

Professor Mike Tobar, internationally-renowned for his studies of measurement, and Professor Richard Hobbs, a world leader in restoration ecology, are two of 15 national Australian Laureate Fellowships winners, announced today by Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr. Professor Michael Tobar / Image: Courtesy The University of Western Australia

UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Alan Robson said:  “Our researchers were selected from a highly competitive field of 148 national and international researchers at the peak of their careers.”

 “The Fellowships are a fitting reward for the research work of Professors Hobbs and Tobar.  We congratulate these outstanding academics whose careers at this University continue to strengthen our claim of achieving international excellence.”

Professor Hobbs’ research is focused on the crucial issues that impact upon the world’s ecosystems.  His work on the impacts of land-use and climate change, invasive species, changed nutrient regimes and other factors that lead to increasingly rapid and unpredictable change in the world’s ecosystems, is essential to the analysis and management of ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.

Professor Tobar’s work on precision measurement has lead to the development of an array of measurement instruments including the sapphire oscillator, which gives the most exact measurement of time developed to date, and commercial and space applications for the atomic clock.  The work being undertaken by Professor Tobar and his colleagues is testing the very fundamentals that underpin physics and is world-leading.

Australian Laureate Fellowships, administered by the Australian Research Council, support excellence in research by attracting world-class researchers and research leaders to key positions, and creating new rewards and incentives for the application of their talents in Australia.  The Fellowships provide project and other funding support.

These latest fellowships bring to seven the number of similar awards made to UWA since 2002 (under the previous Federation Fellowship program) in areas which reflect the strategic research strength of UWA internationally.  Current Fellowship holders are Professor Steven Smith (Plant Energy Biology), Professor Leigh Simmons (Animal Biology) and Professor Mark Randolph (Offshore Foundation Systems); Professor Cheryl Praeger (Mathematics) and Professor David Pannell (Economics).

THIRTEEN brilliant Year 11 and 12 students will use brains instead of brawn in their quest for Olympic gold when they take on the world’s best in the 2009 International Science Olympiads.

WEST Australian scientist Professor Michael Tobar has been awarded the Barry Inglis Medal for Excellence in Practical Measurements by an Individual in Australia.

THANKS to Curtin University of Technology, WA now has Australia’s only Institute of Theoretical Physics, and joins the ranks of global leaders in the research field.

FOR more than eighty years, scientists have tried to uncover the mathematical laws governing the behaviour of colliding particles.

In January 2009, Professor Jim Williams of the School of Physics, UWA was awarded the Endowed Hare Professorship Lecture Award by the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS). The lecture itself was delivered on the 20th of January 2009 at the IACS in Kolkatta, India.

ESTABLISHED in 1977, the Learmonth Solar Observatory is operated by the Australian agency, IPS Radio and Space Services, which falls under the Bureau of Meteorology, and the United States Air Force Weather Agency.

CURTIN University of Technology’s Emeritus Professor John de Laeter has joined an illustrious list of ‘who’s who’ in the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame.

CURTIN University of Technology’s Emeritus Professor John de Laeter has joined an illustrious list of ‘who’s who’ in the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame.

In 2008, Professor Robert Stamps of the School of Physics UWA was transformed into a globe-trotting Science Ambassador, representing not only Australia but the entire Southern Hemisphere, as he was only 1 of 4 people from around the world selected as the IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer!