The Louisa Anne Meredith Medal and The Peter Smith Medal

The Louisa Anne Meredith Medal is awarded every four years to a person who excels in the field of arts or humanities or both, with outstanding contributions evidenced by creative outputs. The medal honours Louisa Anne Meredith’s contributions to the areas of natural history art, scientific art, literature, history and to The Royal Society of Tasmania. The medal will be awarded in 2024 for the first time having been established by the Society in August 2023.

The awardee receives a medal and will be invited to deliver the “Louisa Anne Meredith Lecture”.

Louisa Anne Meredith (née Twamley) was a remarkable woman, a prolific artist, writer and social commentator. She was the first woman to be granted Honorary membership of The Royal Society of Tasmania in 1881. The RST has a large number of her sketches and watercolours in its Art Collection, as well as a number of her books in its Library.

Meredith contributed a great deal to the work of The Royal Society of Tasmania. Over several decades, she sent interesting specimens to the Royal Society Museum and presented beautiful and accurate watercolours of many specimens to the RST. These artworks were much admired at Society meetings as being ‘beautifully executed’. The Royal Society of Tasmania also purchased a number of her illustrations at the time.

Further details and nomination guidelines for the Louisa Anne Meredith medal are at this link.

The Peter Smith Medal is awarded biennially to an outstanding early career researcher in any field. The awardee receives a medal and will be invited to deliver “The Peter Smith Lecture” to the Society.

For the purpose of the medal, “early career” means within the first seven years since the award of a PhD, at the time of the nomination deadline. Extensions to the seven years post-PhD eligibility requirement will be offered to applicants whose career has been interrupted to accommodate carer responsibilities, illness or other circumstances.

Further details and nomination guidelines for the Peter Smith medal are available at this link.

Nominations for these medals open on 30 June, 2024.

Further conditions of these medals are:
• Nominations may be made by anyone, although self-nominations are not accepted.
• Nominations must be received by cob on 31 August, 2024.

All nominations should be submitted by email as a single pdf file to the Honorary Secretary of the Society at admin@rst.org.au by the due date given above. Please give the name of the medal in the subject line.

Guidelines for medal nominations are available at https://rst.org.au/guide-for-medal-nominations/.

Information on the previous winners of the RST medals is available at https://rst.org.au/awards/past-recipients/.

A recent collaboration between the Royal Society of Tasmania and Wagner Framemakers has resulted in a carefully selected, limited print series exhibition, of many popular artworks from the Society’s Art Collection. The works have been framed in museum standard materials and are available for viewing and for sale now at Wagner’s new premises at 65 Argyle Street, Hobart. The gallery is open to view the works between 10am and 5pm weekdays with on-site parking.

The available works include prominent artists such as William Charles Piguenit, John Skinner Prout, Louisa Anne Meredith, Guillaume Simpkinson de Wesselow and Thomas Evans Chapman. For further information, consult the brochure using this link.

The Royal Society of Tasmania is a supporting partner of Hobart UNESCO City of Literature activities. The Society is running an activity as part of “Tasmania Reads 2024”, to be held statewide from 17 – 23 March. The aim of “Tasmania Reads” is to help Tasmanians discover and rediscover the benefits of reading.

The RST activity is

“Book Chat: Challenge yourself – read something new!”

• Choose something new to read: perhaps a biography, a non-fiction release, a novel, a historical work, a classic you’ve never got around to reading, a picture book to share with a child … the sky’s the limit!

• Get together with some friends, colleagues or family members to chat about what you’re reading. You could all be reading different things, or you might like to agree on something new to read. Perfect for your morning coffee break.

• Take a photo of your Book Chat and post it on Facebook or Instagram. Tag @librariestasmania on Facebook and Instagram. Use the hashtags #TasmaniaReads, #WhereDoYouRead and #RoyalSocTas

We’d love to hear about your Book Chat and your reading recommendations. Please send a short report and/or a photo for our RST newsletter and webpage, to: admin@rst.org.au, marked “Tasmanian Reads 2024”.

Find out more about Tasmania Reads using this link.

Any questions? Please get in touch by emailing admin@rst.org.au

The late Anthony Ronald Hope (1940 – 2023) recently received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his services to the mining industry and China-Australia relations. Tony Hope was a geologist and author, and until recently, a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania.

Tony was born in Hobart and graduated with a BSc from Sydney University in 1961, majoring in geology. Tony worked as an exploration geologist in many locations including Mt Morgan, Queensland, the Philippines, Browns Creek NSW, and the Murray Basin, Victoria, gaining enormous experience in technical and managerial roles and mine feasibility studies.

He was a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, and fellow of the Society of Exploration Geochemists.

Tony published several books including the highly successful A Quarry Speaks in 2006, The Hope Factor on exploration and mining in Australasia in 2014, Friends across the Ocean in 2017, and Showcasing Tasmania and its connection to Fujian, China in 2017. Most recently he published a book on Captain James Kelly, trader and explorer in Van Diemen’s Land in the 1800s.

Tony fully deserved his OAM and is well remembered for his achievements by his loving wife Suzy and many friends and colleagues.

Professor Ross Large AO

The Royal Society of Tasmania recently received a grant from the National Library of Australia towards the purchase of museum/gallery standard cataloguing software for the RST Art Collection.

This software program will allow the RST Art Collection to become available online for everybody to see. The catalogue will be an incredible asset for the Society, and to people interested in Tasmanian art, history and culture.

Marley Large and RST Art Curator, Dr Anita Hansen, have been learning how to use the program (eHive) and are now looking for a group of volunteers interested in helping to upload data onto the site. Volunteers will receive training and the use of an online user’s manual.

Uploading the data can be done at home, using your own computer, whenever suits you. It will be up to you how much time you wish to put into the project, which is planned to start in the new year. It will be a great opportunity to support the Society in a venture that will bring it international exposure.

This project will be long-term. There are approximately 950 artworks, each with about 20 pieces of information to upload, so the project will be time-consuming. At the moment, it takes approximately one hour to upload the data for each artwork – and that is just the basic information.

As we progress, the site will be populated with the information on the history and provenance of the artworks that Marley and Anita have worked very hard on for the past three years. It will become an invaluable tool for scholars and researchers.

If you are interested in helping with this exciting project, please contact Anita at anita.hansen@utas.edu.au, to arrange to meet and discuss the project with you.

The Royal Societies of Australia (RSA) is a national organisation established to advocate for the efforts and joint views of Australia’s Royal Societies, and to provide a mechanism for sharing ideas and operational practice among them. All six Australian states currently have operating Royal Societies.

The RSA was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee on 3 August 2007 and the first formal meeting was held in Canberra on 2 February 2008. The operations of the RSA are governed by its constitution which is registered with ASIC. Although in existence for the past 15 years, the RSA has maintained a very low profile and there has been no interaction with The Royal Society of Tasmania for at least the past five years, possibly not for the past 10 years.

The current RSA President, John Hardie AM FRSN (NSW) organised a meeting in Canberra of the six state Royal Societies at the Australian Academy of Science followed by a meeting with the Governor-General at Government House. President Professor Jocelyn McPhie attended representing the RST.

The RSA meeting, held at the Academy of Science allowed very valuable sharing of information on society operations, successes and challenges. RSNSW and RST both have broad goals of advancing knowledge whereas RSV, RSSA, RSQ and RSWA all aim to advance science. RSV is blessed with a full-time staff position paid by the State Government, as well as owning a building and land in theMelbourne CBD.

There was a consensus that the “Royal Society” label is not appealing, either for the state Royal Societies or the RSA. RSSA deals with this problem by combining the initials “RSSA” with the registered trading name of “Science South Australia”. It is worth considering whether the RST might follow a similar pattern, combining the “RST” with a registered trading name such as “Advancing Knowledge Tasmania”.

While all Royal Societies are eligible to be members, at this stage, the RST has not formally joined, pending review of the recently revised constitution of the RSA.

After lunch, the same group reconvened at a meeting at Government House, Canberra, with His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd), the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and Her Excellency, Linda Hurley. The Governor-General is the Patron of the RSA. Each state Royal Society leader gave a short presentation introducing their society to the Governor-General. The President of the RSA then summarised the role of the RSA and outlined collaborative projects suggested during the morning meeting.

The Governor-General responded with strong encouragement of the activities of the Royal Societies and endorsed the role of the RSA. He believes that the Royal Societies can provide independent expert advice and commentary on major issues facing the nation.

On Thursday 30 November, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) held an event at the Theatre Royal in Hobart to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the TAC. The event was for the Aboriginal community and for non-Aboriginal people and organisations who have supported the Aboriginal community in various ways. The Royal Society of Tasmania was honoured to receive an invitation to this event. As President Prof Jocelyn McPhie and Vice-President Dr Julie Rimes were unavailable, Past President Mary Koolhof attended to represent the Society.

This is Mary’s report:

“On arrival, I felt privileged to be offered an Aboriginal t-shirt marking the event, and to be invited by a leading member of the Aboriginal community to wear the t-shirt immediately. Before the formalities, a senior Aboriginal person told me that the Apology the Royal Society offered to Tasmanian Aboriginal people in 2021 had meant a great deal to her and to many other people”.

“The event in the Theatre Royal took the form of a sequence of moderated forums. Presenters seated on the stage described important stages in the journey of the TAC and answered questions while archival film footage played silently in the background. Attendees were treated to an Aboriginal song, and also a dance performance. Some key achievements celebrated were the establishment of the Aboriginal Legal Service, the revival of palawa kani, and the return of Aboriginal ancestral remains. There was a very respectful stillness from all in the theatre when this process was described, and particularly when the film footage showed Tasmanian Aboriginal people carrying the boxed ancestral remains across the tarmac on their return from overseas.“

“It was an honour to attend this event representing The Royal Society of Tasmania, and to meet more members of the Aboriginal community.”

The RST remains committed to the promises made in the 2021 Apology to Tasmanian Aboriginal People and welcomes opportunities to promote Tasmanian Aboriginal scholarship. To this end, transcripts of three recent RST lectures by Tasmanian Aboriginal leaders, Rodney Gibbins, Michael Mansell and Kerry Sculthorpe have been published in the latest issue of the Papers and Proceedings of the RST.

The RST Honours and Awards Committee recently assessed nominations for the 2023 Doctoral (PhD) Award. This award is intended to recognise recent PhD graduates who have made significant advances in the course of their doctoral research. The value of the award is $1,000 (AUD).

Dr Tobias Stål was selected as the winner of the 2023 RST Doctoral Award. Dr Stål is a geophysicist focusing on understanding Antarctica’s deep and shallow structure and properties. He completed his PhD at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, in 2021. The focus of his PhD research was a study of the Antarctic lithosphere revealed by multivariate analysis.

The Antarctic continent, with an area of about 14 million km², is larger than Australia; yet due to the ice cover and inaccessibility, its geology and lithospheric structure are to a large extent unknown. Advancing our understanding of the Antarctic continent addresses fundamental knowledge gaps in plate tectonics and understanding the interactions between the solid Earth and the cryosphere.

Dr Stål’s PhD research addressed challenging topics such as the identification of sub-ice lithospheric boundaries, and the determination of a new geothermal heat flow model for the continent of Antarctica. The research was enabled by innovations in computational and statistical methodologies, including the development of a new software library to enable the multivariate approaches that were ground-breaking for Antarctica.

Since graduating, Dr Stål has taken up a Research Associate position in computation physics at the School of Natural Sciences, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Antarctic Science. He is currently in East Antarctica conducting remote fieldwork until February 2024 as part of his research.

The RST Council recently awarded the two medals on offer this year, namely the MR Banks Medal and the RM Johnston Memorial Medal.

MR Banks Medal

The MR Banks Medal was established in 1997 and is intended for a scholar of distinction in mid-career in any field within the Society’s purview. This year the recipient of the MR Banks Medal is Associate Professor Alex Bissember (University of Tasmania) for his outstanding contribution to the field of chemical synthesis and catalysis.

RM Johnston Memorial Medal

The RM Johnston Medal was established in 1920 for a scholar of great distinction in any field. This year for the first time in the history of the RM Johnston Memorial Medal, two medals have been awarded. The RST Honours Committee decided that it was inappropriate to attempt to separate two outstanding nominations. The RM Johnston Memorial medals for 2023 are awarded to Distinguished Emeritus Professor Paul R Haddad (University of Tasmania) and Emeritus Professor John A Church (University of NSW).

Professor Haddad has made truly outstanding and internationally recognised contributions to the field of analytical chemistry.

Professor Church is internationally known for his work on sea level and climate, and has significantly advanced the field of climate science, including ocean observing systems, and theoretical understanding of physical oceanic processes.