The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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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.

 

Australia Day Honours:

The Royal Society of Tasmania congratulates two of its members whose service to the community has been recognised in the Australia Day Honours List 2018:

Prof Trevor McDougall AC

 Prof. Trevor McDougall, FRS, has been appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for eminent service to science, and to education, particularly in the area of ocean thermodynamics, as an academic, and researcher, to furthering the understanding of climate science, and as a mentor of young scientists.

Chief Justice Alan Blow

 Chief Justice Alan Blow has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the judiciary and to the law, particularly as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, to legal education and professional standards, and to the community.  

TMAG exhibition: Balnhdhurr – A Lasting Impression – artists from the Yirrkala Print Space in the Buku – Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre, East Arnhem Land – until Mar 12, 2018

TMAG is very pleased to be presenting Balnhdhurr – A Lasting Impression from the 15th of December to the 12th of March 2018.
This touring exhibition explores the ancient craft of printmaking, featuring vibrant and historically significant works by Australian indigenous artists.
The exhibition features artists from the Yirrkala Print Space in the Buku – Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre, East Arnhem Land.
This exhibition reflects the dynamic nature of Yolgnu art and how printmaking provides another medium for passing on knowledge to the younger generation. 
Argyle Gallery 4, TMAG City site.

2018 Mawson Medal and Lecture celebrates Professor King

Winner of the M. R. Banks Medal 2015, University of Tasmania, Glacier researcher Professor Matt King. Picture: Peter Mathew

Member of our Society and its President, Professor Matt King will give the Mawson Lecture to the Geological Society of Australia at their convention in 2018. We’ll keep you posted!

Professor King’s research achievements on sea level change have earned him this recognition from the Geological Society. Matt’s work looks at ice sheets in the north and south poles observing the melting changes as the Earth deforms, imparting information about the properties of the planet hundreds of kilometres below its surface: read the full article.

Those who wish to apply: Australian Academy of Science

2018 Northern branch lectures

FEBRUARY 25 Jim Palfreyman “2016 Glitch of the Vela Pulsar” – In a world first, the only ever pulsar glitch observed in action with a large radio telescope. Right here in Tasmania.

** ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 1.15 pm March 25 **

MARCH 25 Prof Pat Quilty “Highlights of Tasmania’s Antarctic Exploration – Scott (why Scott?) and others” – Tasmania has long been a major location for Antarctica explorers. Researching their history has revealed some eye-opening surprises.

APRIL 22 Prof Hamish Maxwell-Stewart “Height, Health and History in Victoria and Tasmania 1850-1920” – How human stature can be used to explore early life disadvantage.

MAY 27 Dr Alison Alexander “Jane Franklin – the Real Founder of the Royal Society of Tasmania?” – The woman who organised, dominated, persuaded and commanded the men around her to co-operate in forming a scientific society.

JUNE 24 Dr Karin Orth “Mega Volcanic Eruptions and the Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time.” – Can Earth’s own internal heat engine driving volcanism be the harbinger of mass extinction?

JULY 22 Dr Caitlyn Vertigan “Shoot. Catalogue. Eat: Interacting with Nature at a Tasmanian Penal Station” – The early history of the Port Arthur penal station (1830-77) was filled with scientific exploration that today might be considered somewhat outside the accepted scientific regime.

** SCIENCE WEEK: AUGUST 11-19 **

AUGUST 26 Assoc Prof Jonathan Binns “Why Does an Engineer Need a PhD?” – Real problems in industry, defence and sport tackled with research and innovation, in Tasmania, Australia and the World.

SEPTEMBER 23 Dr Patsy Cameron “Voices From the Other Side of the Colonial Frontier” – A story of the social, cultural and spiritual survival of a unique people who lived on the Bass Strait islands from 1810.

OCTOBER 28 TBA “Breaking New Ground” – PhD students from the University of Tasmania will be presenting synopses and answering questions about their current research and progress. Topics TBA.

** The Annual QVMAG Staff Lecture**

NOVEMBER 25 David Maynard “Tasmania’s Forgotten Emus” – Before the thylacine there were other less well-known extinctions, including the Tasmanian emu soon after European arrival.

NOMINATE NOW RST Doctoral Awards 2017 closing midnight Nov 30 2017

Nominations are kindly invited for the RST Doctoral Awards 2017.
Calling all researchers under 35 who have finished their PhD in the previous three years!
If you know someone who would be right for this award, please pass on.
Doctoral awards nomination form
Nominations close 30 Nov 2017 midnight.

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: bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au
Small fee for non-members
1.30 pm Sun Nov 26

 

 

 

BOOK NOW The RST Christmas lecture and dinner 2017

The President, Prof Matt King and all Council members warmly invite you, your family and friends to attend The Royal Society of Tasmania annual Christmas lecture and dinner.

This relaxed evening is one of the Society’s most popular events and we hope you can attend.

Emeritus Prof John Simons will speak to the topic of ‘Queen Victoria’s Hippopotamus’ at CSIRO’s Battery Point auditorium at 6 pm on Tuesday 5 December 2017, followed by a buffet Christmas dinner.

Tickets are $45 per person and available through trybooking:

https://www.trybooking.com/SMSS

In 1850 the Zoological Society of London acquired a hippopotamus.  He was called Obaysch. He was the first hippopotamus to have been seen in Europe since Roman times and caused a sensation. This lecture will look at his life and at the various ways in which Victorians constructed the experience of seeing a hippopotamus in London.

Emeritus Professor John Simons lives in Taroona. He has worked in universities in the U.K., the USA and Australia and most recently was Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) at Macquarie University. He is the editor or author of some twenty academic books on a range of topics from medieval chivalric romance to the history of cricket via Andy Warhol. Over the last twenty years he has concentrated on the history of human-animal relationships and, especially, on exotic animals in Victorian England. He is also a published poet and has recently completed his first novel.

The menu for the dinner. A vegetarian meal is available on request, please contact royal.society@tmag.tas.gov.au:

If you have any queries, please contact us at royal.society@tmag.tas.gov.au or Wednesdays from 9.30 to 1.30 on 03 6165 7014.