The Royal Society of Tasmania Christmas dinner will be held in the CSIRO dinning room at Battery Point, Hobart, on Tuesday 4th of December 2018 at 6:00 pm.

 

This year’s Christmas lecture will be delivered by Professor Rufus Black at 6.00pm in the CSIRO lecture theatre prior to dinner.

Rufus Black is the Vice Chancellor and President at the University of Tasmania. Previously, he was Master of Melbourne University’s Ormond College and an Enterprise Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing and a Principal Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. Rufus’ private sector experience includes nine years as a partner at McKinsey and Company, serving clients in Australia and Asia, and as a Director for national law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth. 

His educational and social sector experience includes being the President of Museums Victoria, the Deputy Chancellor of Victoria University, the founding Chair of the Board of the Teach for Australia Board, a Director of the New York based Teach for All and a Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

He has worked extensively for government at Federal and State levels. He was a Board Member of Innovation Science Australia, conducted the Black Review into the Department of Defence and the Prime Minister’s Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community and was the Strategic Advisor to the Secretary of Education in Victoria. Rufus holds degrees in law, politics, economics, ethics and theology from the University of Melbourne and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

 

 

 

 

Click here for for booking arrangements and menu:

Royal Society of Tasmania Christmas Dinner

 

 

The Royal Society of Tasmania will present its annual Postgraduate evening on the 2nd of October 2018.  

A number of outstanding PhD candidates from the University of Tasmania will give short lectures on their favourite research topics, followed by five minutes for questions. As usual, the  areas of research are diverse and fascinating.

 

Nicole Hellessey 

Nicole Hellessey is a PhD student with the Institute for Marine and Antarctic studies. Nicole was lucky enough to be chosen as an inaugural participant of the Homeward Bound Project in 2016 to raise awareness for women in STEM fields. Nicole is now a passionate advocate for women in science and an upcoming science communicator with the Young Tassie Scientists. When she’s not busily working on her thesis or in the lab, Nicole is a single parent and medieval enthusiast.

Nicole is researching Antarctic krill diets and how they change seasonally, inter-annually, regionally and with the environment. Nicole’s end goal is to help the krill fishery to become more sustainable by understanding when and where to harvest to maximise their omega3 outputs whilst minimising their krill catch. Nicole will be discussing the basics of krill biology and the krill fishery and how they both may change into the future. Everything from krill size and sex, to how much the fishery really harvests from the Southern Ocean will be put under the microscope and open for debate.

 

Shasta Henry

Shasta is a current PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, where she is looking into the impact of wildfires on alpine invertebrate communities. After graduating with Honors in invertebrate ecology, Shasta interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, assisting in the identification of new species of beetles from the Amazon. They even named an insect named after her.

As a ‘Young Tassie Scientist’ she teaches school kids the difference between bugs and beetles, and how to grow up to be a scientist. As an independent Science Communicator she talks about insects as technology, on farms, under your skin and on your plate. Shasta is the entomologist on call for ABC radio Hobart and a member of the Australian Entomological Society Conservation Committee.

There are 1 million species of insects named in the scientific literature. But there are an estimated 5.5 million species of insects globally. That leaves a conservative 80% of species unnamed. Looking at insects in a quiet place like Tasmania it is likely, if not necessary, that you’ll name a species or two. A scientific name, as unique and specific as the species themselves is an international label used to file and access the knowledge we possess about any particular species. So what does that process of filing and acquisition look like when the file does not have a label; when people start stuffing papers into neighboring files or stuff has simply not been filed at all? A treasure hunt ensues! A (hopefully) thrilling account of the sleuth work involved in identifying the Tasmanian golden sun cockroach.

 

Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch is a graduate of the Canberra School of Music (performance), Monash University (musicology) and The University of Melbourne (education administration).  He has taught at the Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne, the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music, and the Conservatorium of Music, University of Tasmania. From 1999 to 2008, he was Director of Murray Conservatorium, Albury. In that capacity, he established two orchestras, a number of smaller ensembles and presented numerous public concerts featuring staff and students together with recitals by many of Australia’s finest performers and composers. For forty years, Peter examined in Australia and overseas for the Australian Music Examinations Board. As a classical guitarist, he has performed, broadcast and recorded as soloist and in ensemble with some of Australia’s most highly regarded musicians. These include Prudence Davis and Jeffrey Crellin (Images) and Jane Rayner (Cloud Eight: Australian Music for Flute and Guitar). His MA thesis on Gertrude Healy, the noted Australian violinist, was recognised by way of an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and he is now awaiting the outcome of the examination of his PhD on liturgical music in four Australian monastic communities. Peter and his partner Bronwyn, when not busy in their cottage garden, work in a voluntary capacity at the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart Archives and Heritage Collection.

The Second Vatican Council heralded a period of immense and often unprecedented change for all Roman Catholics, particularly with regard to matters liturgical. Against the backdrop of Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated by Paul VI on December 4, 1963, and subsequent Vatican legislation, this research investigated, through an ethnographic methodology, the responses to the challenges and opportunities that arose through the process of liturgical reform within the Australian monastic context. The communities selected for this study were the Discalced Carmelite Nuns at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew, Victoria; the Trappist Monks at Tarrawarra Abbey in the Yarra Valley, Victoria; the Benedictine Nuns at Jamberoo Abbey, New South Wales; and the Benedictine Monks at New Norcia, Western Australia. The research focused on the liturgical music of each of these communities as it evolved over the period from 1960, two years prior to the commencement of the Council, to 2015, marking 50 years since its conclusion. It demonstrated that, through their collective commitment and the expertise of individual musicians from within their ranks as well as further afield, they resolved, to a large extent, the inherent tension between the demands of liturgical reform, particularly with regard to the vernacularisation of their liturgies and the concomitant necessity to develop sympathetic musical constructs, and the preservation of the treasury of sacred music, especially Gregorian chant. In so doing, they not only succeeded but excelled in meeting the challenge of the reform.

This lecture by Susannah Fullerton OAM will take place on Wednesday, 14 November  2018 at 8:00 pm in the Central Gallery of TMAG, Hobart

The diary of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) has long been considered the greatest diary in the English language.  Historians have found it invaluable, but it is also a superb work of literature and the record of an extraordinary man.

 

Founder of the modern English navy, President of the Royal Society, Member of Parliament, author of books on the navy, talented musician and composer and lover of a very large number of women, Samuel Pepys delighted in many aspects of Restoration London and recorded them all in his diary.

“And so to bed …”, Susannah Fullerton’s talk on Pepys, tells of his experience of the Plague and the Great Fire, his constant womanising, his theatre-going and his dinners.  Susannah loves to share her enthusiasm for this most human and delightful of diarists.

 

Please note the special time of Wednesday 14th of November for this lecture.

 

Further information can be found on Susannah’s website

here:-

     And so to bed …

♠ 

 

Susannah Fullerton, OAM, FRS(N), has been president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, this country’s largest literary society, for the past 22 years. She is the author of several books on Jane Austen and gives many talks around the world about her favourite novelist.

Susannah also gives talks at libraries, schools, the Art Gallery of NSW and State Library of NSW on many other famous writers, such as Pepys, Oscar Wilde, the Brontës, Dickens, Trollope and many more.  She has written Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia about famous authors visiting Australia, and has also written and recorded two audio CDs, Finding Katherine Mansfield and Poetry to Fill a Room.  Susannah also leads literary tours to the UK, France, Italy, Scandinavia, NZ and America for Australians Studying Abroad.

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: TICKETING FOR THE MEDAL PRESENTATION AND LECTURE HAS NOW CLOSED. 

Members and friends are invited to attend The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal Presentation and Lecture, to be hosted at Government House by Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, AC, Governor of Tasmania. and Mr Warner at 6.00pm on Thursday 30 August 2018.  

The recipient of the medal and lecturer is Emeritus Distinguished Professor Ross Large.

The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal was established in 1927 and is the most prestigious award conferred by the Society.

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The Rhythms of Earth and Life Through Time

Earth has a pulse called plate tectonics and this pulse has controlled the formation of great mountain ranges, the chemistry of the oceans and the evolution of life over the last four billion years. The formation and break up of supercontinents, the supercontinent cycle, involves continental plates crashing together to build major mountain ranges. This process, in geological terms, was slow to get underway, occurring roughly every 400 to 600 million years in the early stages of Earth history.

However, about 600 million years ago, the plate tectonic and mountain building process sped up to a frequency of 60 to 120 million years. This change in the rhythms of Earth processes was fundamental to the evolution of life, starting with the Cambrian explosion at 550–520 million years ago, followed by cycles of rapid bio-diversification, then mass extinction.

Five cycles driven by plate tectonics and mountain building took place over the last 600 million years, each commencing with diversification of life and ending in a major mass extinction event. These constitute the rhythms of Earth and life. 

Ross Large is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania. He gained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Tasmania in 1969, PhD from University of New England in 1973 and an Honorary Doctor of Engineering from the University of Lulea, Sweden.

For ten years Ross worked in the mineral exploration industry. In 1984, he joined the University of Tasmania and, five years later, established the Centre for Ore Deposit and Exploration Science (CODES). Under his leadership, CODES grew to become recognised as one of the top industry collaborative ore deposit research centres in the world.

Ross has published over 120 scientific papers and is internationally recognised for his research on the genesis of ore deposits and relationships to Earth evolution. His current research interest is the chemistry of past oceans and relationships to evolution of life, mass extinction and mineral deposit cycles.

He has won many awards during his career – the most recent as lead scientist for a UTAS team that won the 2016 Eureka Prize for interdisciplinary research. Ross is the President of The Royal Society of Tasmania and the Chair of the Tasmanian Division of The Academy of Technology and Engineering.

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You can hear Ross talking about his research on ABC Radio Hobart Breakfast with Ryk Goddard.

 

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Booking information:

We invite you to register to attend The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal Presentation and Lecture at Government House at 6.00pm on Thursday 30 August 2018.

All attendees will need to book and print their tickets by Friday 17 August 2018.
The bookings for this event will open on Wednesday 1st August and close on Friday 17 August 2018.
There is no charge to obtain a ticket and these may be booked via the Government House website as follows:

1. Go to http://www.govhouse.tas.gov.au and click on the ‘Events and Tours’ tab on the right-hand side of the homepage. Select ‘Reserve tickets’ for The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal Presentation & Lecture. You will be directed to the Government House Tasmania event on the http://Trybooking.com website.
2. Enter the Invitation Code: RSMP18. This will allow you access to continue your booking via the Trybooking website.
3. Complete the booking as per the Trybooking website instructions. Tickets should be booked in the names of the guests who wish to attend. Generic bookings, such as “Partner of Mr Bill Smith”, are NOT acceptable. In the ‘‘Capacity in which attending” box, we would be grateful if your guests would indicate the capacity in which they will be attending the reception, e.g:  Organising Committee, Board Member, Member, etc. Ticket(s) will be sent to the guest’s nominated email address.
4. Guests will need to print their ticket(s) and ensure that they bring it/them to Government House on the evening or, alternatively, the ticket(s) can be scanned from a mobile phone.
5. The closing date for bookings is Friday 17 August 2018 (6.00 pm).

We look forward to seeing you there.

David Wilson
Honorary Secretary

 

 

 

War is deeply woven into human history. Organised society and conflict appear to have marched side by side, each affecting the other. Wars have changed societies in many ways but changes in society have also affected the nature of war. We remember war, rightly, for its destructive impact but it has also led to advances in science, to improvements in the position of previously marginalized groups such as women, or to greater equality. This lecture will examine some of the paradoxes of war drawing on examples from history. Since it is a century since the end of the Great War particular attention will be paid to its causes and consequences.

Professor Margaret MacMillan is a Canadian historian at the University of Toronto and professor of International History at Oxford University, as well as a leading expert on history and international relations.

Professor MacMillan was educated at the University of Toronto and Oxford University. Her doctoral dissertation was on the social and political perspectives of the British in India. She is former provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto and was a member of the History Department of Ryerson University in Toronto for 25 years. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards for her book Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference on 1919 and its Attempt to End War.  

MacMillan’s research has focused on the British Empire in the later 19^thand early 20^thcenturies and on international relations in the 20^thcentury. She has served on the board of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, the Atlantic Council of Canada, the Ontario Heritage Foundation, and the Churchill Society for the advancement of Parliamentary Democracy (Canada). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto.  She is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a Companion of Honour (Commonwealth Realms).

Professor MacMillan’s publications include: Women of the Raj:The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India; The Uses and Abuses of History(based on the 2008 Joanne Goodman lecture series); The War that ended Peace: how Europe abandoned Peace for the First Word War; and History’s People: Personalities and the Past (based on the 2015 Massey Lectures).

 

Professor MacMillan recently delivered the 2018 Reith lectures series, originally broadcast on BBC Radio4 and now being broadcast on ABC Radio National “Big Ideas” program. You can listen to podcasts of the series here:

1.  War and Humanity

2.  Making Sense of the Warrior

3.  Civilians and War

 

 

Presented in partnership with the High Commission of Canada, the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

 

 

 

 

All are welcome, free lecture.
In the past decade the field of astronomy has been building towards a revolution in the way we measure distances and other fundamental physical properties of the stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.  The rapid increase in detector sensitivity and computing power in the 21st century has enabled both ground-based and space-based astronomy missions to survey enormous areas of the sky with unprecedented precision in the astrophysical parameters.
Andrew will discuss some of the most significant recent developments to come out of this “big data” revolution, which range from improved knowledge of the frequency and masses of planets around nearby stars, the distribution of luminous and dark matter in the Milky Way, and the forensics of working out how the galaxy itself was assembled by infalling matter over billions of years.
Dr Andrew Cole is Associate Professor in Physics and Astronomy and the Director of the Greenhill Observatory, the home of UTAS optical astronomy research infrastructure.  Dr Cole studies the processes and effects that govern the evolution of matter in the Universe from the Big Bang to the present day.  Essentially, how things came to be from the beginning of time as we know it.  Along with many who came before him and undoubtedly many to follow, he is driven by an innate curiosity, stubbornness and a sense of adventure.  Dr Cole uses the UTAS 1.3-metre Harlingten telescope to search for exoplanets around stars in the direction towards the centre of the Milky Way by analysis of gravitational microlensing light curves.