The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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Lynette Ross – Science and nature: Government Cottage and the Franklins – Meeting Room, QVMAG Inveresk @1.30 pm Sunday May 27 2018

The primary function of Launceston’s Government Cottage was accommodation for the Lieutenant-Governor and other high-ranking officials either visiting or living in the town. However during the years the Franklins were resident in Van Diemen’s Land their penchant for the sciences added another facet to the complexity of its story. Lynette will reveal how the building was utilised to promote the study of the natural world that gave impetus to scientific endeavours in the north including the establishment of the Launceston Horticultural Society and the consolidation of the Royal Society.
Lynette Ross has worked in the fields of history and archaeology since the late 1980s. Her career includes positions at UTAS, at Port Arthur as Heritage Officer and working as a private contractor.  In the late 1990s she was engaged by the Launceston City Council to compile a history of the Government Cottage that used to lie in the north eastern part of what is now City Park. The book on the subject is being readied for publication and this lecture is based on one of its chapters.

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

Ms Sophie Muller, Director of the Tasmanian Climate Change Office in the Department of Premier and Cabinet – Putting the change in climate change – Tuesday 1 May, 2018 @8 pm in Royal Society Room, TMAG

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.

Prof Hamish Maxwell Stuart – Health, Height and History in Victoria and Tasmania 1850 – 1920 – Sun April 22 @1.30 pm Meeting Room, Inveresk QVMAG

We can tell a lot from the way that people grow. The extent to which we are able to attain our genetically programmed height depends upon the conditions we encounter in utero, early childhood and adolescence. Poor sanitation, insufficient diets and other environmental insults can all impact on the timing of growth and the stature we attain in adulthood. In recent years, historians have started using records that provide details of height to explore variations in the conditions encountered by children born in different places. This presentation uses information about soldiers and prisoners recruited or discharged from gaol in the period 1865-1920 to explore variations in growth patterns in Victoria and Tasmania for men born in the period 1850-1899.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a professor of social history at the University of Tasmania. He was born in Nigeria but brought up in the UK. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (MA in History, PhD in Economic and Social History). He worked for the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow before migrating to Tasmania in 1997. Since then he has worked on both the Launceston and Hobart campuses of the University of Tasmania as well as spending extended periods of time at the University of Texas, Austin, and University College, Dublin (where he held the Keith Cameron Chair in Australian History). In recent years he has worked closely with the Tasmanian Archive to build cradle to grave population datasets in order to explore the long-term impacts of convict transportation and the pathways responsible for the intergenerational transmission of inequality.

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

Prof Michael Breadmore, 2017 M.R. Banks medal recipient – Chemical answers now – safer food, water and environment through chemistry on a chip – Tuesday April 10 @8 pm Royal Society Room

Tuesday April 10, 2018, 8 pm Royal Society Room

The development of smart phones and smart watches and our always-connected lifestyle has meant that we are able to obtain information about a myriad of things in an instant of a second.  You can find out where the closest restaurant is, get directions from your current location, and even an estimation of the calorific value of the food by taking a photo.  But it can’t tell you whether the fish on your plate is safe to eat, nor whether the water is safe to drink.  To do this, we need an entirely new generation of sensors, that requires transferring the measurement from the lab out into our life.  Over the past 20 years, Professor Breadmore has focused on simplifying the chemical processes involved in such measurements for therapeutics, pollutants and explosives, and the ways in which this type of technology can be made to increase the likelihood of commercial uptake and the development of products.  It is a long path, with many remaining challenges and problems to solve, but sometime in our lifetimes, there will be something to measure what you want to know right now.

Professor Michael Breadmore was born and educated in Tasmania, graduating from the University of Tasmania with a PhD in analytical chemistry in 2001 before spending 3 years undertaking postdoctoral research in the US (University of Virginia), Switzerland (University of Bern) and the United Kingdom (deltaDOT).  He returned to Australia and Tasmania as an ARC Postdoctoral fellow (2004-2008) which led to an ARC QEII Fellowship (2009-2013) and an ARC Fellowship (2014-2017), all within the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS).  He has made significant contributions to the field of analytical chemistry over the past 20 years to simplify the design and fabrication of portable analytical technology and applying these to challenging current and emerging analytical problems facing society.

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.

2018 AGM guest speaker Rosalie Martin – 2017 Tasmanian of the Year – Tuesday 6 March Central Gallery, TMAG @7.30 pm AGM, 7.45 pm for Drinks, 8 pm Lecture

The Society is very pleased to present this year’s guest speaker Rosalie Martin – 2017 Tasmanian of the Year.
Transforming lives – the role of speech pathology in improving prisoners’ lives and society’s future
Rosalie Martin, Tasmanian of the Year 2017, made a phone call to the Risdon Prison in 2013 and sat in the Australian of the Year Awards in 2017.  She will share this journey, its stories, and the evidence behind the work of Just Sentences – evidence that keeps her shoulder to the wheel of systems-change.
The Just Sentences pilot project brings speech pathology support to the literacy programs of a small number of inmates within the Tasmania Prison Service.  These are men whose literacy skills have not yet moved very far along the literacy continuum.  But they can!  And they have!  With the right kind of extra support, many lives which are currently warehoused can be transformed.
Rosalie is a criminologist, an accredited facilitator with the Center for Courage & Renewal, and a clinical speech pathologist with more than 30 years’ experience. In 2013 Rosalie founded a charity, Chatter Matters Tasmania, to bring literacy and parent-child attachment programs to Tasmania’s Risdon Prison. She was awarded 2017 Tasmanian Australian of the Year for the work she began at the prison. She is grateful for the platform this recognition has afforded her to promote the value of kind communication in evidence-based service delivery. And she is ever-grateful to all family, friends and colleagues. Nothing that is worth doing is ever done alone.

 

Mr Martin George – Planet, Planets Everywhere: Our search for other Solar Systems – 1.30 pm Sun Nov 26, QVMAG Inveresk

Astronomers had long assumed that there were planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, but it is only since the 1990s that we obtained evidence that this was true.   Now we know of thousands of these planets, making it clear to us that planetary systems are common.  However, except in a few special cases, we have never seen any of them.  The speaker will explain the various methods that are used to detect them and to discover a good deal of information about their orbits and characteristics.

Martin George is Manager of the Launceston Planetarium at QVMAG.  He is a well-known communicator of astronomy to the public, with several regular radio interviews and a weekly space article in The Mercury newspaper.   He is also a contributing editor of the US magazine Astronomy.

Martin is a fellow and former president of the International Planetarium Society and is its Chair of International Relations. He has been awarded the David Allen Prize for astronomy communication by the Astronomical Society of Australia, and the Winifred Curtis Medal for Science Communication in Tasmania.

Launceston Lecture Series
Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk
RSVP by Thu Nov 23: [email protected]
Small fee for non-members
1.30 pm Sun Nov 26

 

 

 

Dr Anita Hansen – 175 years of the Royal Society of Tasmania – Oct 22, 1.30 pm @Meeting Room, QVMAG Inveresk

On October 14 2018, The Royal Society of Tasmania will be celebrating 175 years. It is the third oldest Royal Society, with only the Royal Society and the Edinburgh Royal Society predating it. The lecture will examine the Society and its influence on the history and culture of Tasmania. There will also be a discussion of events planned to celebrate the anniversary.

Dr Anita Hansen has been an artist all her life, working in Tasmania, interstate and overseas. She holds a doctorate from the University of Tasmania, a Master of Fine Arts, a Graduate Diploma in Plant and Wildlife Illustration and a Bachelor of Fine Art degree. Anita co-edited The Royal Society of Tasmania’s book The Library at the End of the World: Natural Science and Its Illustrators and has published a number of journal articles, as well as curating exhibitions in Tasmania and interstate.

Dr Claire Hawkins – Extinction matters: could citizen science help? – Sep 24, 1.30 pm @Meeting Room, QVMAG Inveresk

Twenty-seven species are listed as having gone extinct from Tasmania in recent times. Threatened Species Day (7 September) marks the date since the last known thylacine died, in 1936. It’s a time to reflect on why extinction matters to us, and how we might reduce our negative impacts on species survival. My own response, as a threatened species zoologist, has been to take up a Churchill Fellowship on citizen science, to engage the wider community in better understanding the needs of the plants and animals in their own backyards. In this talk, I share my findings on how this might work most effectively. Dr Clare Hawkins carried out her Ph.D. on the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), a semi-arboreal mammalian carnivore endemic to the forests of Madagascar. Its ecological similarities to the spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) brought her to Tasmania in 2001 to study the latter species’ habitat requirements. She subsequently joined the State Government, initially with the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, and spent four years monitoring the impact and distribution of Devil Facial Tumour Disease. She is currently the IUCN Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group Red List coordinator and author of the Naturetrackers blog. For the Bookend Trust, she co-organised two ‘Extinction Matters’ BioBlitzes in 2016, held on either side of Threatened Species Day, to be reprised this year in November. Her current focus is on novel approaches to better monitor and manage Tasmania’s diverse threatened fauna (from quolls and eagles to skinks, butterflies and burrowing crayfish). In 2015, she was awarded a Gallaugher Bequest Churchill Fellowship to develop citizen science study designs for long term monitoring.