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

 

 

Friday 10th August 2018, 6:00 pm – Stanley Burbury Theatre UTAS, Hobart

 

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

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

TMAG Customs House, Hobart Tuesday 3 July @8 pm

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.

Tuesday Jun 5, 2018 @8 pm Royal Society Room, TMAG Hobart

Dr Klocker will talk about the 2016, 2017, and 2018 caving and cave diving expeditions he led to Sistema Huautla, one of the world’s deepest cave systems located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.  The goal of the expeditions is to connect Sistema Huautla with its outlet in the remote Santo Domingo Canyon about 10 kilometers from its entrance.  The successful connection of Sistema Huautla with its outlet would result in the world’s deepest and most spectacular cave traverse.

Dr Klocker will focus in particular on the March 2018 expedition which promises to be one of the most ambitious and challenging cave diving projects ever attempted as the divers attempt to surpass the previous limit of exploration, some five kilometers underground, reached in 1984 when logistical challenges halted progress.

Dr Klocker, originally from Austria, completed a diploma in marine environmental science in Germany, and moved to Hobart to work as honorary research fellow at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC.  He undertook a PhD as part of the UTAS-CSIRO joint PhD program in Quantitative Marine Science, followed by a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked on ocean turbulence in the Southern Ocean.  He returned to Australia as a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science and the Australian National University.  Dr Klocker was then awarded an ARC DECRA Fellowship at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies continuing his specialist work on ocean turbulence.

Dr Klocker got hooked by caving in 2008 while doing his PhD, and soon after combined his caving and diving addiction to become a cave diver in 2011.  In Australia his main focus has been on cave exploration in the Junee-Florentine in Tasmania, an area known for Australia’s deepest cave systems, remote sumps and huge exploration potential.  In the last couple years he also turned his attention towards major cave systems in Mexico, in particular Sistema Huautla, where he enjoys the challenge of combining deep ‘dry’ caving and challenging cave diving in one of the world’s most amazing cave systems.

There is a growing recognition of climate-related financial risk and legal liability for government and businesses. Increasing stakeholder demand for disclosure of climate change risks and opportunities, and a legal liability risk associated with failing to incorporate climate change in decision making are key drivers for change. Technology is also a major impetus for change with transformation in the transport sector representing a significant opportunity for Tasmania.  The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2016 rated failure of climate change adaptation and mitigation as the most impactful risk to the global economy over the next decade. This talk will explore what’s changed in climate change.
Sophie Muller is the Director of the Tasmanian Climate Change Office in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. She leads the Tasmanian Government response to climate change including policy and projects focusing on addressing the State’s emissions, the transition to a low carbon economy and responding to the impacts of climate change through adaptation. Sophie is a graduate of the University of Tasmania with a Master of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts. She has worked in the climate change field for the past five years and has held roles across government in tourism, health and education. Sophie is passionate about driving change in complex public policy areas to achieve positive outcomes for the Tasmanian community.

Lecture at 8 pm Royal Society Room, TMAG Customs House building. Enter through Dunn Place car park and look for the RST banners at the entrance.