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.

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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.

June Lecture at QVMAG – Prof. Ross Large

2019 Launceston Lecture Series

The Royal Society of Tasmania

Presents

The Rhythms of Earth and Life through Time

A Public Lecture by

Professor Ross Large AO

Venue: Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk, Launceston

Time: 1.30 pm Sunday, 23 June 2019

Admission is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania

$6 for general admission, and

$4 for students, QVMAG Friends, and members of Launceston Historical Society.

This talk by challenges the Darwinian concept that evolution is a random process. Professor Large outlines recent research on the trace element composition of sedimentary pyrite that demonstrates that the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere has varied significantly through geological time in a rhythmic fashion, which has greatly influenced the course of evolution on Earth. The rhythms, which are ultimately driven by super continent cycles and mountain building events, have sped up through time, and not only control evolutionary events, but also the variation of atmosphere oxygen and mass extinction events.

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. Ross has published over 130 scientific papers and is internationally recognised for his research on the genesis of ore deposits and relationships to Earth evolution. He has won many awards during his career the most recent being the 2016 Eureka prize for interdisciplinary research, and the 2018 Medal of the Royal Society of Tasmania. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 2019. Ross is the current President of the Royal Society of Tasmania and the immediate past chair of the Tasmanian Division of The Academy of Technology and Engineering.

This event is generously supported by

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scientist Travelling Research Award – closes 1 June

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The Australian Academy of Science

2020 Awards Round is open ∞

Applications close on 1 June 2019

Click HERE to go to the Australian Academy of Science website

There a number of awards available in three categories – research awards, conference awards and travelling fellowships – including an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scientist Travelling Research Award.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scientist Travelling Research Award

Click HERE for more details

Revival of Tasmanian Aboriginal language – June 2020 at TMAG

2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Language

Theresa Sainty and Annie Reynolds

present

palawa kani – The revival of Tasmanian Aboriginal language

Tuesday, 4 June 2019

8.00pm in the Royal Society Room,

Customs House Building, entrance from Dunn Place, Hobart

.From the flourishing possibly sixteen original languages spoken in lutruwita (Tasmania), to near extinguishment under post-invasion colonial pressures and sleeping for almost two hundred years, palawa kanihas emerged as the language of Tasmanian Aborigines. It is now fundamental to Aboriginal community activities and family life, with two generations of children having learnt it from infancy. palawa kaniis shared with the public through renaming of places, and things as varied as a newly discovered squat lobster and the next Antarctic icebreaker. How did this happen? Where does the knowledge of the language come from? And can it ever be a ‘living’ language, one that is used in daily life?

Theresa Sainty is a Pakana woman and has been Aboriginal Linguistic Consultant for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s palawa kaniLanguage Program since 1997. Theresa has also worked with the Tasmanian Department of Education, Aboriginal Education Services, developing Aboriginal Cultural Awareness training and a number of curriculum resources about Tasmanian Aborigines. Theresa is current Chair of TMAG’s Tasmanian Aboriginal Advisory Council, and has begun a Senior Indigenous Research Scholarship at UTAS.

Annie Reynolds has evolved from graduate studies of Old Norse, Old English and Old Irish in Sydney and Adelaide to coordinating the work of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s palawa kaniLanguage program statewide since the mid 1990s. Within the TAC she also conducts historical research and writes and edits a variety of material, mostly for the Aboriginal community.

Dr Alison Alexander – May lecture at QVMAG

2019 Launceston Lecture series

The Royal Society of Tasmania

INVITES YOU TO

Jane Franklin – the Real Founder of the Royal Society of Tasmania

A PUBLIC LECTURE BY

Dr. Alison Alexander

Sunday 26 May 2019, 1.30 pm

Meeting Room, QVMAG, Inveresk

admission free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania

$6 general admission

$4 for students, QVMAG Friends, and members of Launceston Historical Society

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Various people have desired to gain kudos from establishing themselves as the founder of the Royal Society of Tasmania, notably Governor Eardley Wilmot. Alison will argue that Jane Franklin was the real founder, though as a woman with no official status she had to work behind the scenes.

Born and educated in Tasmania, Dr. Alexander has written thirty-three books about Tasmanian history. Her paid career was writing commissioned histories, including Launceston Church Grammar School and the Australian Maritime College. The subjects of her biographies range from romantic writer Marie Bjelke-Petersen to governor’s wife Jane Franklin, this book winning the National Biography Award in 2014. Duck and green peas! Forever! Finding Utopia in Tasmania (2018) is her most recent book.

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 175^thAnniversary 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.

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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.

Doctoral Awards lecture – Hobart

For the May lecture of the Royal Society we will hear from the joint winners of the 2018 RST Doctoral Thesis Award. This award is given annually to two recently graduated PhD academics who have made significant advances in the course of their doctoral research. The awards are made for excellence in research in any field within the purview of the Society, so we will be have the pleasure of hearing presentations on very diverse topics.

The Royal Society of Tasmania is pleased to introduce the recipients of the 2018 Doctoral Awards,

Jack Mulder and Feng Pan

Tuesday, 7 May 2019

8.00pm in the Royal Society Room,

Customs House Building, entrance from Dunn Place, Hobart

Doctoral Thesis Winner: Feng Pan

Title: Individualised osteoarthritis pain treatment based on phenotypes: are we there yet?

Pain is the most prominent symptom in osteoarthritis. Pain experience is a complex and multifactorial phenomenon. Peripheral structural damage has been traditionally considered a source of pain and this has strengthened with MRI studies; however, a discordance between structural damage and pain severity suggests individual variations in pain presentation which may be determined by genetic, environmental (obesity), psychological and neurological factors. Each of factors may play its role or intact with other factors to contribute to the variation which can partly explain the overall lack of treatment efficacy with the current ‘one-size-fits-all’ treatment approach. Identifying pain phenotypes in knee osteoarthritis is promising to develop individualised treatments; however, the validity and reliability of osteoarthritis pain phenotypes have not been tested in clinical practice. Given the heterogeneity of osteoarthritis pain, peripheral, psychological and neurological factors are considered key phenotypic dimensions in the identification of pain phenotypes. This new concept allows for patients’ stratification for clinical trials, thus providing potential for individualised interventions in patients with osteoarthritis pain.

Dr Feng Pan is a Research Fellow at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, supported by the NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. His research interests span both epidemiology and clinical interventions to osteoarthritis-related pain. Much of his work has been on identifying biomechanical risk factors for chronic pain and osteoarthritis, identifying pain and osteoarthritis phenotypes and testing new therapeutic treatments.

Dr Pan completed a Masters of Medical Oncology in 2012, having completed a Bachelor of Medicine in 2009. His PhD was conferred in May 2017. His thesis work assessed the genetic and systemic factors in knee osteoarthritis and pain. Prior to his PhD, Dr Pan worked as an oncologist at the Anhui Provincial Hospital affiliated with University of Science and Technology of China where he was involved in running multiple clinical trials and assessing genetic contribution to solid tumors through systematic literature review and meta-analysis.

Doctoral Thesis Winner: Jack Mulder

Title: From Rocky Cape to the Rocky Mountains: The geological journey of Tasmania’s oldest rocks

The iconic rugged landscapes of western Tasmania are underlain by an ancient package of rocks that record the very earliest history of Tasmania. The ancient Tasmanian rocks represent a package of sediments that were deposited between 1.4 and 1.0 billion years ago. These sediments are made up of tiny fragments of even older rocks that were eroded from source regions and transported down rivers before accumulating as layers of sand and mud in a shallow sea. The source of these sediments can be traced and used to explore where Tasmania may have been located 1.4—1.0 billion years ago by studying tiny grains of the mineral zircon within the rocks. Zircons contain an ‘internal clock’ produced by the radioactive decay of uranium, which allows these tiny time capsules to be dated.

Dating several thousand individual grains of zircon from the ancient Tasmanian sediments reveals that they were sourced from older rocks that formed 1.45 and 1.70 billion years ago. Surprisingly, these zircon ages are a poor match for the age of potential source rocks in nearby parts of in Australia. This mismatch in zircon ages indicates that when the Tasmanian sediments were deposited, Tasmania did not form part of Australia. Instead, the zircon ages in the Tasmanian rocks closely match the age of 1.45 and 1.70 billion year old rocks that currently underlie much of the southwest United States. Based on the close match of zircon ages, the ancient Tasmanian sediments were likely sourced from the older rocks in the southwest United States, which supports a connection between these regions 1.4—1.0 billion years ago. A connection between Tasmania and North America at this time is also supported by the recognition that rocks a package of exposed in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Idaho and in Grand Canyon, Arizona are the same age, rock type, and contain the same zircon age signatures as the 1.4—1.0 billion year old rocks in Tasmania. These 1.4—1.0 billion year old North American rocks may represent parts of the same ancient sedimentary basin in which Tasmania’s oldest rocks formed. This ancient basin was fragmented as Tasmania drifted away from North America and subsequently collided with Australia to achieve its present-day position.

Dr Jacob (Jack) Mulder, Research Fellow, Monash University

Jack is a geologist who studies ancient rocks to understand how Earth’s continents are built and how they have evolved through deep time. Jack grew up in southern Tasmania and studied at the University of Tasmania, completing his undergraduate in 2013 and a PhD in 2017. His PhD research integrated field work in western Tasmania and the western United States with state-of-the-art analytical techniques, and plate tectonic modelling to study the earliest geological history of Tasmania. He is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at Monash University where his research focuses on using the sedimentary record to track secular changes in the composition of the continental crust and plate tectonic processes.

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

de Wesselow exhibition of watercolours

An exhibition of the Tasmanian watercolour works of

Francis Guillemard Simpkinson de Wesselow (1819–1906)

21 March – 11 June 2019 at TMAG

**Dr Anita Hansen of the Royal Society will be giving a talk about the exhibition on**

30 April 2019

at 10.30 am

in the Royal Society rooms, TMAG, Hobart

All are welcome. Click HERE for registration.

Francis Guillemard Simpkinson de Wesselow, naval officer and artist, was born in London the son of Sir John Augustus Francis Simpkinson. His mother, Mary Griffin, was the sister of Lady Jane Franklin. Upon joining the navy in 1832 he served with his uncle, Sir John Franklin. He arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in September 1844 to take up his appointment to the Rossbank Magnetic Observatory in Hobart Town.

Simpkinson was an accomplished artist and recorded a great many landscapes around Van Diemen’s Land. He was often accompanied on his painting excursions around the colony, and even to Port Philip, by the artist John Skinner Prout.

When Lieutenant Simpkinson returned to England in December 1848, he took his collection of some 200 drawings and watercolours with him. In 1869 he added de Wesselow to his name by deed poll. Responding to a request from the Royal Society of Tasmania, Simpkinson de Wesselow gifted his colonial collection of paintings and drawings to the Society when he was aged 81.

On 10 July 1900 he wrote to the Bishop of Tasmania, Henry Hutchinson Montgomery, who co-jointly with Professor William Brown established the historical and geographical section of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1899….

I happen to have several volumes of drawings and sketches made during the years I passed there – 1844 to 1849 – which have been lying packed away almost ever since my return. I am exceedingly glad there is now a chance of their being of some use or interest, & I forward them to you with much pleasure.

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This stunning Royal Society collection is housed by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.