Dinosaur Picnic in the Botanical Gardens, Saturday 10th November 2018, 11.00am to 2.00pm.
A free event for the whole family sponsored by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
The advancement of knowledge
A free event for the whole family sponsored by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner AC, Governor of Tasmania, and Mr Richard Warner.
Set in the 1770s, the eccentric lead character Dr Thomas Beddoes is convinced that consumption can be cured by inhaling the breath of cows. Aided by his brilliant young assistant, Humphry Davy, he embarks on a series of experiments to prove that miraculous cures can be effected by inhaling nitrous oxide. But his friend, the foppish Joseph Banks who has recently returned from his voyage with James Cook, is less convinced. When Banks discards his dandified exterior and sets out to befriend the King and organise the establishment of Botany Bay as a penal colony, the friendship rapidly deteriorates.
The cast: Michael Edgar (Dr Beddoes), Gerard Lane (Humphry Davy), Caitlin McCarthy (Anna Beddoes) & Christopher Jackson (Joseph Banks)
In the end both men are bitterly disappointed. Beddoes must finally admit his experiments with gas have failed and nitrous oxide, ‘laughing gas’, is useful only to fuel riotous parties. Banks has poached the brilliant Davy from him, and his wife Anna runs off to London to be with Davy. Banks himself, even though he pulls the strings of Empire, is immobilised by gout, enraged that the experiment that is Australia appears to be failing, and realises that the sense of adventure and original discovery he once experienced in Tahiti are forever over.
The play traces the path of Joseph Banks from fop to gigantic president of the Royal Society, and his manoeuvring to set Humphry Davy on the path of eventually becoming President of the Society. In a harmonious marriage of science and the arts, the play examines the notion of science at a time when anecdotal evidence and natural philosophy was giving way to scientific method, the empirical method of knowledge acquisition involving careful observation, experimental testing and measurement of deductions drawn from the hypotheses.
The play is also full of humour and includes the enactment of early laughing gas experiments and tooth-pulling.
Thee play reading was followed by cake to celebrate the Society’s 175th Anniversary.
RSVP by 31 October 2018. Invitation to the book launch on Tuesday 6 November at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery at 5.30pm:
Click here to view the article by Mary Koolhof in The Mercury on 28 October 2018:
Take advantage of the prepublication discount until 30 October 2018
Patrick Quilty had a long and distinguished career in Earth Science and Antarctic exploration. His many contributions to the Royal Society of Tasmania have been very significant and highly regarded by members and Council. In 1986 he was elected the senior vice-president of the Royal Society of Tasmania, when the Governor was president. He became president of the Society again in 2010 and was the Chair of the RST Foundation for several years besides being member of the Awards Committee. In 1996 he received The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal for his scientific achievements and service to the Society. In 2011 he convened the highly successful two-day Mawson Symposium for the Society.
Patrick obtained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and PhD from the University of Tasmania. He spent six years in the oil industry as a palaeontologist with West Australian Petroleum (WAPET), followed by five years as a lecturer at Macquarie University. His first visit to Antarctica was in 1965/66 with the University of Wisconsin, followed by a field trip to Macquarie island in 1968, with a party that identified the island as a unique piece of uplifted oceanic crust. From 1981 to 1999 Pat was Chief Scientist for the Australian Antarctic Division and ANARE. He made a total of 14 working trips south, including three summers in the Vestfold Hills investigating fossil whales he had originally discovered in 1989, and participated in three ANARE marine science voyages.
During his period at the Australian Antarctic Division, Patrick was very active in international Antarctic leadership, serving as a vice-president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for four years, and chairing the organisation of the 20thmeeting of SCAR in Hobart in 1988, as well as symposia on the Vestfold Hills (1984) and Macquarie Island (1987).
Patrick Quilty has published over 200 scientific papers, including six in the last three years with several more in the final stages of submission. He became an Honorary Professor in Earth Sciences and IMAS at the University of Tasmania in 2010 and has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at California State University. His many awards include Member of the Order of Australia (AM), U.S. Antarctica Service medal, Inaugural Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Tasmania, and the Phillip Law Medal of the ANARE Club. Two Antarctic geographic features and five fossil species have been named in his honour.
Honorary Professor Patrick Quilty was a warm hearted and generous man, who epitomised the mission of our Society (the advancement of knowledge), and devoted much of his valuable time to Society matters. He will be greatly missed by our members.
The Royal Society of Tasmania congratulates President Prof. Ross Large on the award of the Society’s most prestigious medal, the Royal Society of Tasmania Medal, for his research in the field of geology.
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:
We look forward to seeing you there.
David Wilson
Honorary Secretary
The AGU Fellowship is an honour given to individual AGU members whose visionary leadership and scientific excellence have fundamentally advanced research in their fields.
The AGU is an international non-profit scientific association with nearly 60,000 members in 139 countries. It is dedicated to advancing the Earth and space sciences for the benefit of humanity through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs.
This year’s Fellows will be celebrated at a ceremony in December at the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.