The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

Queens’s Birthday Honours – George Merridew & Bernard Pryor

The President, Council and Members of the Society offer warm congratulations to two Royal Society members who were awarded honours in the Queen’s Birthday List 2019.

 

.

Dr Colin George Merridew, recently retired Royal Society Northern Committee member, has been awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for significant service to surgical and obstetric anaesthesia.  

.

.

.

.

 

Mr Bernard Pryor, Royal Society of Tasmania newsletter editor and member, has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to horticulture, and to the community.

Dinosaur Symposium Abstracts

Symposium: Dinosaurs and Evolution of Life. 

UTAS, Hobart, Tasmania

 

Over the weekend of 23-24th March 2019, participants at the symposium heard keynote talks by distinguished scientists in their field.

 

Click below to download all the lecture abstracts from the recent Dinosaur Symposium

DINOSAUR SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS

.

The conference was organized by The Royal Society of Tasmania as part of our 175thAnniversary celebrations, with support from the Tasmanian Division of the Geological Society of Australia and the University of Tasmania. It was run in parallel with an exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery called “Dinosaur rEvolution; Secrets of Survival” created by Gondwana Studios of Launceston, Tasmania.

 

⋅

 

 

..

Themes of the Symposium

Recent research on dinosaurs
Evolution of dinosaurs and birds
Proterozoic evolution of life
Phanerozoic evolution of life
Mass extinction events

 

 

 

New Honorary Editor and Council Member

The Royal Society of Tasmania is pleased to welcome Dr John Volkman as the new Honorary Editor to the Society. He will take over from Dr Margaret Davies OAM who undertook the role for the past sixteen years. 

Dr Volkman has a long history of scientific research carried out in Tasmania and internationally. He is currently Co-Editor in Chief of the international journal Organic Geochemistry. John is a former Chief Research Scientist and Program Leader of the multidisciplinary Marine Biogeochemistry program at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere in Hobart. He continues at CSIRO as an Honorary Fellow. Previously, he was Chair of the Tasmania Science and Technology industry Council and Aquafin CRC Environment program leader examining the environmental effects of salmonid and tuna aquaculture. He is internationally recognized for the discovery and application of lipid biomarkers in organic geochemistry, environmental studies, petroleum geochemistry, palaeoclimatology and the evolution of lipid biosynthetic pathways. Dr Volkman is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

 

 

 

We would also like to welcome Roxanne Steenbergen as a new member of the Royal Society of Tasmania Council

Roxanne has thirty-five years of experience in primary teaching across a range schools. For over fifteen of those years Roxanne taught gifted and talented students online through the Department of Education’s Centre for Extended Learning (now the Gifted Online program). Through this program Roxanne engaged with students across Tasmania. In 2007, Roxanne and a colleague jointly won the Microsoft 2007 Innovative Teacher Awardfor their “Cool Chemistry” project. The project involved the creation of a virtual classroom connecting two schools, two teachers and a practising chemist. Within this environment, children used a range of software to share and compare their inquiries. Roxanne also has a keen interest in literacy through childhood reading and believes every student should have books in their hands whenever they want one – whether they are classics like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or the more modern stories of the 13-storey treehouse series.She won the Scholastic Literacy Champion Awardin 2013. Roxanne retired from teaching in June 2018, but retains a strong interest in making Science teaching accessible to everyone.

Passing the torch

Dr Margaret Davies OAM

AT the Royal Society of Tasmania meeting on 2 April, Dr Elizabeth Robinson presented a compelling lecture on educating young people in Tasmania today.

The Royal Society took the opportunity to thank Dr Margaret Davies OAM for her many years of service as Honorary Editor to the Society.

Margaret was educated at the University of Tasmania, the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide, from where she retired in 2002 after an academic career at that institution of 30 years. Her research focused on the taxonomy and systematics of the Australopapuan frog fauna with an interest in osteology. She has discovered and named 34 species of frog during that research career and has published 118 papers, books and edited works.

An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia, she served as Secretary, Editor, Vice-President, President and Minutes Secretary before returning to Tasmania where she became Honorary Editor of the Royal Society of Tasmania, a position she filled with distinction for sixteen years. Under her leadership the Papers and Proceedings thrived, and the annual calendar was much anticipated. Dr Davies also oversaw the publication of a number of excellent books and other quality publications.

The torch has been passed to Dr John Volkman who has been appointed the new Honorary Editor to the Society. Welcome aboard, John!

 

Presenter Dr. Elizabeth Robinson and RST Councill member, Dr. Taryn Noble

Ian and Liz Nicolson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Royal Society members, Noel Beswick and Dr. Deborah Beswick