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RST Medal Winners 2024

Peter Smith Medal

Peter Warnock Smith (1924-2017) was an inorganic chemist, who at the University of Tasmania introduced new research and teaching topics, such as analytical chemistry, industrial and applied chemistry, and chemistry for engineers. Smith was a long-term contributor to the RST and was President in 2006.

The Peter Smith Medal is awarded biennially to an outstanding early career researcher in any field. The awardee receives a medal and is invited to deliver the “Peter Smith Lecture” to the Society. The inaugural Peter Smith Medal was awarded in 2018.

The Peter Smith Medal for early-career scholars

This year the recipient of the Peter Smith Medal is Dr Edward Doddridge (University of Tasmania) for his outstanding contribution to the field of physical oceanography. Through his research, he works to improve our understanding of ocean currents and the ocean’s role in our climate.

Dr Edward Doddridge is a Physical Oceanographer working at the ocean-sea ice interface with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. Dr Doddridge’s research uses theory, numerical models, and observations to improve our understanding of the fundamental dynamics of the polar ocean and its response to climate change. His work has revealed new details about the influence of sea ice on ocean currents, and of ocean warming on sea ice loss.

Dr Edward Doddridge
(Photo Harshula Jayasuriya).

Louisa Anne Meredith Medal

Louisa Anne Meredith (1812-1895) (née Twamley) came to Tasmania in 1840 and was a remarkable woman, a prolific artist, writer and social commentator. She was the first woman to be granted Honorary membership of The Royal Society of Tasmania in 1881. The RST has a large number of her sketches and watercolours in its Art Collection, as well as a number of her books in its Library. Meredith contributed a great deal to the work of The Royal Society of Tasmania. Over several decades, she sent interesting specimens to the Royal Society Museum and presented beautiful and accurate watercolours of many specimens to the RST. These artworks were much admired at Society meetings as being ‘beautifully executed’. The Royal Society of Tasmania also purchased a number of her illustrations at the time.

The Louisa Anne Meredith Medal is awarded every four years to a person who excels in the field of arts or humanities or both, with outstanding contributions evidenced by creative outputs. The awardee receives a medal and is invited to deliver the “Louisa Anne Meredith Lecture” to the Society. The Louisa Anne Meredith medal was established by the RST in 2023. This year is the inaugural award of this medal.

The RST Honours Committee decided that it was inappropriate to attempt to separate two outstanding nominations for the medal. The Louisa Anne Meredith medals for 2024 are awarded to Cassandra Pybus and Fiona Hall.

Professor Pybus is well regarded internationally as an historian of colonial society in Australia, S.E. Asia, the Caribbean and North America. As a non-fiction writer, she draws on exhaustive historical research to create compelling alternative narratives about the past.

Cassandra Pybus is a distinguished historian, author of thirteen books and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has been the recipient of several Australia Council Fellowships and a Federation of Australia Centenary Medal for outstanding contribution to literature. Between 2000 and 2013 she was Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at both the University of Tasmania and the University of Sydney and has been Fulbright Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Texas, and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. Her recent book A Very Secret Trade interrogates the trade in First People’s skeletal remains, which is the last of a trilogy concerned with the destruction of the First People of Tasmania, beginning with Community of Thieves, published in 1991, followed by Truganini in 2020 which won the National Biography Award.

Fiona Hall AO is an internationally respected visual artist, one of Australia’s most highly regarded and recognised artists. She works across a range of media including painting, photography, sculpture and installation.

Fiona Hall is an artistic photographer and sculptor. Hall represented Australia in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She is known as “one of Australia’s most consistently innovative contemporary artists”. Many of her works explore the “intersection of environment, politics and exploitation”. Fiona Hall is best known for extraordinary works that transform quotidian materials into vital organic forms with both historical and contemporary resonances. Hall works across a broad range of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture, moving image and installation, often employing forms of museological display. Hall’s sculptures are characterized by their intricate construction and thematic resonance with issues of environmentalism, globalisation, war and conflict. In 2013, Hall was recognised “for distinguished service to the visual arts as a painter, sculptor and photographer, and to art education” with the award of Officer (AO) in the general division of the Order of Australia.

A medals ceremony will be held at Government House on 18^th June, 2025 where the medal winners will be presented with their medals by Her Excellency the Honourable Barbara Baker AC.

Climate Disinformation: Strategies to Defeat Decades of Denial and Deceit

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to its November 2024 Public Lecture by guest speaker Dr. Mel Fitzpatrick. All RST members, their guests, and the public are welcome.

Please register your interest using this link.

Where: Geology Lecture Theatre, UTAS, Sandy Bay Campus on Sunday 3 November, 2024.

Time: 3.30pm for pre-lecture drinks, 4pm for the lecture.

Dr. Mel Fitzpatrick has been at the forefront of climate science, activism, and education since Australia’s commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. Over the decades, Mel has witnessed firsthand how disinformation, denial, and deception have obstructed progress on climate action, both within Australia and globally.

In this talk, Mel will shed light on the key players behind these efforts, their tactics, and how we can better inoculate ourselves and others from the pervasive disinformation that threatens meaningful change.

Dr Mel Fitzpatrick is a climate scientist and educator, who over the last two decades has concentrated on effective communication of climate science to both policymakers and the general public.

A specialist in polar and alpine research, Mel has worked for the Australian Antarctic Program, the US Antarctic Program, and in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Mel was an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, contributing to the reports in both 2001 and 2007, and also worked for six years at the Union of Concerned Scientists as part of a small team developing a series of climate impact reports used for outreach and education in coastal and mountain areas.

Mel now works in the education sector, contributes as a member of the City of Hobart’s Climate Futures Portfolio Committee and continues to be passionate about bridging science and policy.

Dr Tas van Ommen – Ice cores and climate: looking back over a million years of earth history – Sep 5, 8 pm @Royal Society Room TMAG

Ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland have reshaped our understanding of how the climate system operates. We see in the cycles of temperature and carbon dioxide the pulse of the ice ages back to 800 thousand years. Ice core records for recent millennia show detailed changes that are linked to drivers of Australian climate such as the westerlies or El Niño from which we can infer past periods of drought. Australia has been a leading nation in ice coring, particularly in East Antarctica, with a focus on studies of climate over recent millennia and into the last ice age. Now, an international initiative is maturing to drill for a continuous record extending into the very oldest ice, more than a million years old. Australia has announced its plans to lead such an expedition, which will commence early next decade. This talk will look at why such an old ice core record matters, and how the project might proceed.
Dr Tas van Ommen is the leader of climate research with the Australian Antarctic Division. Tas has participated in six research expeditions to Antarctica, drilling ice cores and conducting airborne surveys of the ice and bedrock beneath. In his most recent trip he drove a tractor in a traverse across some 1300 km of the continent, crossing areas never previously visited. His research interests centre around high resolution ice core studies, connections with Australian climate and the stability and future of the Antarctic ice sheet. Tas is leading the Australian project to drill the ‘million year’ ice core and is also co-chair of the International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences, an international planning body behind the search for this oldest ice core.

Where did all the tigers go? The Tasmanian Museum thylacine collection 7 March 8 pm @Central Gallery TMAG Hobart

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to attend a lecture by Kathryn Medlock:
Kathryn Medlock is Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).
The TMAG collection contains 94 registered thylacine specimens, making it one of the largest and most diverse collections of this extinct marsupial carnivore in the world’s museums.
All interested people are welcome
No admission charge
More information: www.rst.org.au