STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 582

Full transcript of

SIR MARK OLIPHANT CEREMONY

on 18 August 2000

at Bonython Hall

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

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OH 582 SIR MARK OLIPHANT CEREMONY

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, MORTLOCK

LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 582

ABC radio recording of Sir Mark Oliphant Memorial Ceremony held at

Bonython Hall, The University of Adelaide, on 18th

August 2000.

TAPE 1 SIDE A

ANNOUNCER – You’re with 891 ABC Adelaide, and now we cross to Neil Wiese

at The University of Adelaide for the Memorial Ceremony for Sir Mark Oliphant.

WIESE – Good morning, and welcome to Bonython Hall where today many

eminent South Australians are gathered to pay tribute to Sir Mark Oliphant. It is

appropriate that the ceremony is being held here, at The University of Adelaide,

where in 1919 Sir Mark began studying Physics. Now, as an agnostic, Sir Mark

did not want a church service, so we’re here today for a memorial ceremony and

to hear from those who want to pay tribute to this great South Australian.

Members of Sir Mark Oliphant’s family are being seated in the hall, the last to be

seated Ms Vivienne Wilson and Dr Keith Powell, Mr Michael and Mrs Peppi

Lawson, Mrs Monica Oliphant, Ms Michelle Oliphant, Ms Katherine Oliphant

and Mr Tony Reith and their child, Anna.

Invited guests have been arriving here at Bonython Hall since just after nine this

morning to the strains of Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel by the Zephyr String

Quartet. Today’s memorial ceremony is being led by Dr Harry Medlin, Visiting

Associate Professor in Physics and Mathematical Physics, and Emeritus Senior

Deputy Chancellor at The University of Adelaide.

Now, amongst some of the guests here today we have four Premiers. We have the

current Premier, John Olsen, the immediate past Premier, Dean Brown, and also

John Bannon and Dr David Tonkin, a former Premier. And we also have the

former Governor of South Australia, Sir Keith Seaman and Lady Seaman, and

another former Governor of South Australia, Sir Donald Dunstan and Lady

Dunstan. And we also have a number of Members of State Parliament.

And the people are gathered here now; the Bonython Hall is full, and the scenes

that we’re seeing here are quite moving.

Now, after the War, it’s interesting to note that Sir Mark returned to the

University of Birmingham, where he continued as Professor of Physics and helped

build the proton synchrotron. You may recall there in 1950 he was approached

by the newly-established Australian National University to become the first

Director of the ANU Research School of Physical Sciences. He accepted, and he

returned to Australia with his family. Now, establishing the Australian Academy

of Science was just one of Sir Mark’s proudest achievements. He realised, upon

his return to Australia in 1950, that Australia had no voice, no international voice,

in the scientific arena.

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And now let’s just enjoy some of that music while we await the speakers.

(Music continues for several minutes.)

Would you please stand for the arrival of the Oliphant family?

Amongst this morning’s speakers will be John Olsen, the Premier of South

Australia, and the current Governor of South Australia, Sir Eric Neal.

JD DR HARRY MEDLIN, Master of Ceremonies Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome. The members of the Oliphant family who are here today are Sir Mark’s

daughter, Vivienne Wilson, with Keith Powell, her son, Michael, and his wife Peppi,

Sir Mark’s daughter-in-law, Monica Oliphant, and her children, Michelle Oliphant,

Katherine Oliphant with her husband, Tony Wright, and Sir Mark’s great-grandchild,

Hannah. Well, I taught both Monica and her late husband Michael, Sir Mark’s son,

here in Adelaide. Sir Mark and I had many contacts over the years, but I mention

only two, and both were during centenaries. The first was in 1974, the year of the

centenary of this great university, and in the middle of Sir Mark’s term as Governor.

He attended many, if not all, of the formal occasions that ran from March through to

October in that year. The second was in 1986, the centenary of the appointment of

Sir William Bragg, later Nobel laureate, together with his son, Sir Laurence Bragg,

as the Elder Professor of Mathematics in Experimental Physics, with the

appointment dating from the 1st of March 1886. Sir Mark and I attended the

centenary lectures in this great hall by Professors Frank Close, Freeman Dyson and

Paul Davies, and by Stephen Bragg, grandson of Sir William. Well, having

graduated as he did, in 1923, with first class honours in Physics, and having worked

as a demonstrator with Professor Sir Kerr Grant in 1926 and 1927, Sir Mark was our

oldest living graduate and our oldest living former staff member. Ladies and

gentlemen, I welcome all of the distinguished guests, together with all friends and

colleagues here and elsewhere today. The order of today’s ceremony is as shown in

the program. The first tribute today is to be given by the Honourable John Olsen,

Premier of South Australia. Mr Olsen.

THE HONOURABLE JOHN OLSEN, Premier of South Australia The Oliphant

family and descendants, His Excellency, Sir Eric Neal, Lady Neal, Leader of the

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Opposition, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen. Born in the year of Federation, Marcus

Laurence Elwin Oliphant was, like his nation, within sight of the Centenary when he

passed away last month. He lived through an extraordinary century, the likes of

which the world had never seen before, and few people could have appreciated the

fact as fully as Sir Mark Oliphant himself. He was a man who embraced progress

and placed himself at the vanguard of change. And what changes he saw! He lived

through the century that took us from dreams of flight to the moon, from the box

brownie to the digital handicam, from the Overland Telegraph to the World Wide

Web, and from trench warfare to the nuclear madness of mutually assured

destruction. Sir Mark Oliphant regretted some applications of science, particularly

his role in developing the atom bomb, but that was what made this brilliant scientist

even more laudable. He embraced change, but warned of its consequences. He

encouraged progress, but realised the need for conservation. He loved science, but

he never valued it above humanity.

Growing up in Adelaide in the Adelaide Hills, Mark Oliphant had the benefit of a

strong family life. Mark and his brothers attended public school. His father was a

dedicated public servant, and his mother worked hard to maintain a good home life.

He studied hard because he wanted to learn, and what a lesson he then leaves for the

rest of us an honest toiler from a school in the Adelaide Hills, who worked hard

and made the most of his talents forging a career at the forefront of world scientific

endeavours.

As a youth, Mark Oliphant endured the frustration and disappointment applying

for jobs and missing out. He worked hard at jobs he didn’t enjoy, but he kept at it

and he kept his sights high. This was a man who had the self-confidence to believe

he could be a nuclear physicist, yet he had the humility to spend his days stacking

books onto library shelves so he could pay his way through university. At this very

university, the young Oliphant’s enthusiasm for learning grew. He allowed himself

to be inspired by people around him. His biographers cite a debate the young Mark

Oliphant witnessed involving the great geologist and Antarctic explorer, Sir Douglas

Mawson. And what a momentous night that seems now Mawson and Oliphant in

the same room here at the university, discussing, no doubt, the great theories of the

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day. Of course, at that time Mawson was a hero, Oliphant unknown, but now

together they stand as scientific heroes of Adelaide, Australia, the world.

In his early twenties, Oliphant left Adelaide with his young wife, Rose, to take up

a scholarship at Cambridge, joining the world’s leading laboratory in experimental

physics. And even today, in the post-nuclear age, many of us are mystified by the

term ‘nuclear physics’. It seems so difficult to some of us, so abstract, so

incomprehensible. It certainly holds a beauty that attracted, however, Mark

Oliphant. He and his colleagues were investigating the very building blocks of

matter. Their immensely challenging quest was aimed simply at discovering how

the substance of the universe was structured. It is a matter of supreme irony that this

valiant quest to understand the beauty of creation produced the knowledge that

unleashed history’s most destructive weapon. And, whatever we might think of

nuclear weapons, there is no doubting the worthiness of Mark Oliphant’s wartime

efforts, first with the development of radar, and then with the creation, the bomb.

Oliphant worked in teams dedicated to bring about world peace and saving lives,

and whilst he personally carried in part the shame of Hiroshima like an albatross for

some of his life, but while there will always be debate about how the bomb was

used, history judges the actions of Oliphant and his colleagues well. They fulfilled a

need to develop technology ahead of others. And, importantly in Oliphant’s case, he

spent the rest of his life campaigning against the proliferation of nuclear weapons

and promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

Coaxed out of retirement in 1971, Sir Mark became the state’s first locally-born

Governor. Determined to express his views, he spoke out on issues such as religion,

conservation, and behind the scenes he disagreed with many issues with the

government of the day. But he was immensely popular with the public, who

respected his integrity, his compassion. I remember on occasion him visiting Yorke

Peninsula as Governor when I was Mayor, and those trips into the country were

certainly welcomed, and no-one could miss his presence with that shock of wispy,

white hair. And somehow you felt he looked exactly as a nuclear physicist should.

He was always dignified, yet a man of the people. On one occasion, upon their

retirement, he invited his chauffeur and butler from Government House to a formal

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dinner at Government House. He insisted that they arrive at the front door and

receive the full treatment. It was a touching and egalitarian demonstration of

gratitude to his staff.

Sir Mark Oliphant’s love for his home state survived till the end. He remained

until his passing the Patron of the Investigator Science Centre, a role ideally suited

to one so dedicated to science and education. And to honour that ideal and to

permanently commemorate this great South Australian, a main gallery at the

Investigator Science Centre is to be named ‘The Mark Oliphant Gallery’. This

gesture has the support of the Centre and Sir Mark’s family, which has already

offered some personal memorabilia to be displayed, and this will create a tangible

link between the young, enquiring minds of the future and the great experimental

physicist of our past.

Throughout his life, Mark Oliphant thought deeply about religion. His views on

traditional Christianity often caused a stir. ‘Yes, I’ve got a feeling that man is

immortal,’ he once mused, ‘but in the sense that what he achieved lives on after him.

This, I believe, is a far greater immortality than sitting on a stool and playing a

harp.’ So we know today, perhaps, Sir Mark is not playing a harp. Perhaps instead

he is finally being filled in on all the secrets surrounding the structure of the

universe. Certainly judged on his own criteria, he has attained an immortality of

sorts. What he achieved lives on, and his memory will remain a source of

inspiration and fine example to all of us. Thank you.

DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by His Excellency, Sir Eric

Neal, Governor of South Australia. His Excellency is also, on this occasion,

representing Her Majesty the Queen. Your Excellency.

HIS EXCELLENCY SIR ERIC NEAL, Governor of South Australia The

Honourable John Olsen, Premier of South Australia, The Honourable Mike Rann,

Leader of the Opposition, the Oliphant family, ladies and gentlemen. By any

standards of judgment, Sir Mark Oliphant was a great Australian. He was an

exceptionally gifted physicist, an inspiring and inspired leader of his fellow citizens,

a remarkable builder of scientific apparatus on which some of the awe-inspiring

advances in forefront physics depended throughout the 20th century.

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Sir Mark was the first-born son of a public servant and his school teacher wife in

Adelaide nearly 99 years ago. He was short-sighted and partially deaf, and had to

work part-time as a library assistant to raise money for his university education.

Yet, when he died, his honours and decorations filled an entire page of his

biography published 20 years ago. Among other distinctions, he had become a

Companion of the Order of Australia, a Knight of the British Empire, a Fellow of

the Royal Society, the co-founder and Foundation President of the Australian

Academy of Science and the recipient of honorary doctorates from eight of the

world’s leading universities. By the age of 32, he had become one of the key

members of the world-famous team of 34 atom-splitting scientists which Britain’s

greatest physicist, Lord Rutherford, had gathered around him at the Cavendish

Laboratories in Cambridge. As Professor of Physics at Birmingham University

during the late 1930s, Mark Oliphant directed research which led to the two major

war-winning inventions of radar and the atomic bomb. He then led a British team of

100 scientists to the United States, where their work was crucial in helping the

Americans develop the world’s first two atomic bombs. But his idealism and

humanity recoiled in horror at the appalling loss of life which occurred when the

Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were virtually destroyed by those bombs.

What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki altered Sir Mark’s perception of human

priorities. From 1945 he committed himself passionately to the twin causes of peace

and environmentalism. In 1955 his public statements and speeches on these subjects

attracted the attention of a kindred spirit, the famous philospher and humanitarian,

Bertrand Russell. Russell decided that the Australian should be invited to join other

men in the founding of a group of peace lovers known as the ‘Pugwash Movement’.

Founding members included Albert Einstein and seven other Nobel prizewinners.

For more than 20 years their annual meetings influenced world opinion and attracted

the specific attention of President JF Kennedy and the Russian leader, Nikita

Khrushchev.

Beyond his own discipline of physics, Sir Mark Oliphant’s major contribution to

Australian public life was his unwavering commitment to freedom of thought and

speech and to the ideal of international friendship. He had style, presence and great

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dignity whenever he spoke out strongly on public issues. I am told that, at the same

time, he was boisterous and fun-loving, and loved a good joke. He enjoyed being

provocative and challenging what he perceived to be entrenched views. The young,

especially, loved him for this, and he had a profound influence on Australian science

as a communicator and facilitator. In South Australia, the annual Oliphant Science

Prizes are contested by more than three thousand students at thirty or more schools.

Sir Mark was proud of this. The contests helped him discharge his sense of

obligation to society.

I am sad that I did not know Sir Mark personally as well as I would have wished,

but I do have a very happy memory of him dining with us at Government House.

The table setting included the Oliphant candlesticks, for we have at the house six

simply-designed candlesticks made of sterling silver by my distinguished

predecessor himself. One of Sir Mark’s hobbies was the crafting of jewellery and

other valuables with the help of a small lathe. He presented the candlesticks to

Government House as a memento of his own service there with his beloved wife,

Rose.

I also enjoy the story of how one of Sir Mark’s houseguests once broke the heel

of her shoe. Lady Oliphant told her to leave it outside her room and assured her it

would be quickly repaired. It was. And when the guest expressed pleasure at the

result, she was embarrassed to learn that the Governor himself had taken it out to his

garden shed and mended it for her. It was a spontaneous expression of his personal

humility.

May I leave you with a quotation from another of Sir Mark’s guests at

Government House, the late Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck. ‘To feel the inner

grace of Oliphant,’ Sir Paul wrote in 1981, ‘one has to see him in the family circle

and read his book on Lord Rutherford. Living in his home I came to know better the

true, the simple, the genuine man that he is, as well as to see more clearly the great

man who is the historic figure.’ I myself fear it may be a long time before Australia

sees his like again. Thank you.

DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by the Honourable Mike

Rann, Leader of the Opposition. Mr Rann.

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THE HONOURABLE MIKE RANN, Leader of the Opposition Members of the

Oliphant family, Your Excellency, Premier, distinguished guests. Today we pay

tribute to Sir Mark, not just because he helped change life on this planet, but because

he had the conscience to question the ways in which he changed it. In a lifetime

nearly as long as the century he graced, he added his name immortally to the other

South Australians of the sciences Bragg, Mawson, Lord Florey, who gave us

penicillin, and lately Basil Hetzel, whose work on iodine deficiencies has lessened

the pain of the world. We need more great thinkers-in-residence in this city in the

park.

Sir Mark Oliphant helped split the atom and thus was a co-pioneer with Einstein,

Rutherford and Oppenheimer of that nuclear energy that changed the life yet

darkened the dreams of half a century of mankind. He was both co-author and

witness to the horrors of nuclear war. But, like Einstein, he was a man whose

conscience troubled him, and his passionate sense of social justice prevailed. Sir

Mark used his scientific expertise to help end a war, but he also saw the horror he

helped unleash, brighter than a thousand suns. He knew what Oppenheimer meant

when he said at Los Alamos, quoting from Hindu scripture, ‘Behold, I am become

death, the shatterer of worlds.’ Sir Mark thereafter fought for world peace and an

end to the arms race which took humanity to the precipice. Sir Mark sought to tame

the dark angel of nuclear power and make it useful, beneficial and domesticated, no

longer the all-devouring beast, and this became the great cause of the last half of his

long life, the strongest advocate against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Sir Mark was a radical, a progressive thinker, a doer in a world of dreamers and

procrastinators. He was not afraid to challenge orthodoxy, or to unsettle the comfort

zones of the comfortable, to speak out and not hold his peace. He was a figure of

authority who challenged authority. He knew that ivory towers must be shaken for

humanity to move forward.

Sir Mark earned the admiration of Don Dunstan, who first submitted his name to

Buckingham Palace as his choice for Governor some years before his eventual

appointment, but there were concerns. This was a man that lesser minds found

unsettling. But these were the ’60s. The Cold War meant that peacemakers like

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Mark Oliphant were held to be suspect, troublemakers, romantics who failed to

understand that the world order depended on the power of the few to destroy

everything at the push of a button. So, despite his involvement in the Manhattan

Project, Sir Mark was denied a visa to enter the United States. His idealism cost

him dearly. The mood soon changed, however, and in 1971 Don Dunstan finally

got his way and Sir Mark was appointed Governor. But he was a different kind of

Governor a head of state who never failed to speak out provocatively,

controversially, fearlessly, rattling cages sometimes sharply, but many times with

a kind, gentle, mischievous wit tinged by eccentricity. By doing so, Sir Mark wrote

himself into our history and our hearts as a great Governor, a great activist, a great

and much-loved South Australian. Sir Mark’s work in the field of education is still

paying dividends. He knew, as all of us should know, that it’s education that

matters as our social as well as economic imperative, and he was a mentor to many.

He was a founding father of a great university, the ANU, and in many ways it was

made in his image, questioning, probing, challenging, asking ‘Why?’ and also ‘Why

not?’

Sir Mark Oliphant was a restless spirit. He reached the top in so many areas,

from scientific research and education to working to end the War and then fighting

for an enduring peace, to public service in its purest sense, and to our environment.

But it was as a teacher, and as a teacher by example, that he most changed us,

touched us and moved us. In the past two years we’ve lost some great South

Australians Don Dunstan, Dame Roma Mitchell, Archbishop James Gleeson and

now Sir Mark. They all live on in our memories but, more importantly, each leaves

enduring legacies and a persistent challenge for us all to move forward, to do better,

to help others, to make a difference, to make our own mark, and to believe, like

them, that public good is possible and within our reach. They believed that to do

otherwise would be to fail in our duty to ourselves and to each other. Sir Mark did

not fail in his duty; he fulfilled it charmingly, angrily, tenaciously and in doing

so he enhanced and illuminated our lives.

I offer my deepest sympathies to the Oliphant family and to all his friends.

END OF TAPE 1 SIDE A: TAPE 1 SIDE B

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DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, the Adelaide Chamber Singers,

under their musical director, Carl Crossin, will now perform two pieces, both of

which have been requested by the family. They are Ave verum corpus by William

Bird and Guten nacht by Johann Sebastian Bach.

(Music.)

The Adelaide Chamber Singers.

DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by one of our former

students, now Professor Eric Weigold, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies

of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the Australian

National University, Canberra. Professor Weigold.

PROFESSOR ERIC WEIGOLD, Australian National University Members of the

Oliphant family, Your Excellency, distinguished guests. We are here to celebrate the

life of one of Australia’s most distinguished sons, one who was a notable figure on

the national and international scene throughout the 20th century. As a successor to

Sir Mark Oliphant as Director of his research school at the Australian National

University, I would like to tell you a little about his career and the impact he had on

Australian science, particularly physics, during his long and distinguished life.

Sir Mark was one of a small cluster of outstandingly creative physicists who, by

shaping nuclear physics in its infancy, were assigned by fate to crucial roles in the

Second World War. He was one of the most distinguished members of Lord

Rutherford’s Cambridge School of Nuclear Physics and, as such, one of the last

direct links with that Golden Age of elementary particle physics. Always clever

with his hands, Mark Oliphant supported his early studies at Adelaide University by

working in the library in the Physics Department. After completing his honours

degree, he worked on surface tension with Dr Roy Burton, and together they

published a paper in Nature, the first scientific publication to bear Sir Mark’s name.

Some three decades later, Roy Burton also taught me physics in the same

department.

Sir Mark was greatly stimulated by a visit to Adelaide in 1925 of the New

Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, then Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in

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Cambridge. After Lord Rutherford’s visit, Sir Mark was determined to work in his

laboratory, an aim he achieved when he won the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship. He

arrived in Cambridge in 1927. Sir Mark’s greatest personal triumphs in science

came in the 1930s, when his friendship with Lord Rutherford was at its height and

when, with the departure of James Chadwick, he became Assistant Director of the

laboratory, then the world’s leading centre for experimental nuclear physics. In the

course of research on the effects of impact of high-speed ions on surfaces, he

showed consummate ability in designing and constructing apparatus. Clever with

his hands, as I’ve already mentioned, he was an excellent machinist and instrument

maker. In this way he radically raised the Cavendish Laboratory’s standards of

techniques. His love of working with his hands continued throughout his life. He

was still busy making things on his own lathe in his late 90s.

Sir Mark’s greatest achievement at the Cavendish was to show that, on the

collision of two light nuclei, one could produce a heavier nucleus, or atom. This

was the first example of fusion. At this time, around 1933, Lord Rutherford was

arguing that the notion of useful energy from nuclear interactions was and I quote

‘Moonshine’. He thought that the very high energy needed to initiate a reaction

would result in some loss of energy. Of course, what Sir Mark had shown in his

experiments was how two lighter hydrogen atoms could fuse to form heavier ones

with the release of energy. This is the source of energy in our sun, and in the stars.

Later, it also led to the development of thermonuclear weapons. It also forms the

basis for the production of fusion energy, still the Holy Grail of energy research.

Sir Mark had done outstanding work with Lord Rutherford, but he wanted to run

his own show. Rutherford was infuriated when Sir Mark took the Chair of Physics

at Birmingham University in 1937. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society. At Birmingham Sir Mark set to work to design and build a new

laboratory for nuclear physics. This project was interrupted by the War. His

laboratory was, however, responsible for one of the most important scientific

inventions of the War: the cavity magnetron. Developed under Sir Mark’s

direction, it produced high-power centimetre wavelength radiation. This invention

transformed radar. It made possible the development of an apparatus that enabled

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narrow beams of radio waves to be produced. Transmitted in pulses of concentrated

power, these radio waves could seek out ships, submarines and aircraft. This radar,

installed in aircraft, played a decisive part in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. It

directed the blind firing of British warships, it guided the night fighters to the

German bombers, it enabled Bomber Command for the first time to identify its

targets with reasonable certainty, and it helped the US Navy to intercept Japanese

supply ships and ultimately to destroy the Japanese fleet. A sample magnetron, the

core of this radar, was taken to the United States in the autumn of 1940 and

described by the US publication Scientist at war as the most important contribution

to the reverse Lend Lease.

Two German physicists, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, were also working in

Birmingham at that time, but were unable to participate in the secret radar work

because of their nationality. Instead they worked on nuclear fission and the

practicality of constructing an atom bomb. They calculated that the critical mass of

the fission bomb could be as little as a few pounds of separated fissile material. Sir

Mark recognised the importance of this conclusion and was able to introduce their

work to senior defence officials in Whitehall, and to convince them that atomic

weapons were practical. In 1941 and 1943 he went on a mission to America.

Through his friendship with the leading US scientists and his powerful personality,

he helped in the reopening of the collaborations on nuclear research. From 1943 he

worked at Berkeley as part of the Manhattan Project. Like others who were also

involved, he was appalled by the devastation and loss of human life caused by the

atom bomb when it was finally used against Japan to end the War.

In 1946 he returned to Birmingham to build a new type of accelerator. It was to

produce hydrogen projectiles of energy more than a billion electron volts. His

mission was to investigate at deepest level of understanding the mysterious

properties of matter. At that time, a new national research university was being

planned in Canberra. Sir Mark accepted an invitation to join a group of senior

academics, including Keith Hancock and Howard Florey, to provide academic

advice for this new university. These advisers were all offered appointments as

directors of the planned research schools, but only Sir Mark accepted a post, as

15

Director of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering. He returned

to his native Australia in 1950. Florey had predicted that, on his arrival, there would

be a hole in the ground and a lot of broken promises. Half the prophecy was more

than correct. There were two such holes, one at the new laboratories, the other at

the site of the intended Oliphant residence. Sir Mark continued to direct research at

the school for thirteen years. He began a broad program in the physical sciences

expanding the work of his research school to include astronomy, mathematics and

geophysics. He converted a bare patch of ground into a creative and expanding

school whose more than 600 doctoral graduates have been extremely successful and

continue to play crucial roles in Australia and overseas. I am an early graduate of

that school, and it is where I first met Sir Mark. The school became a major centre

of Australian research and post-graduate training, and it gave birth to new research

schools in earth sciences, information sciences engineering, astronomy and

astrophysics and mathematical sciences.

In 1954 he founded and became the first President of the Australian Academy of

Science. He was largely responsible for the famous and futuristic copper dome of

the Academy building on the edge of the Australian National University campus,

and saw the Academy become one of the most élite scientific institutions in the

world. During his Governorship of South Australia, Government House was a

regular host to visiting physicists and Nobel laureates.

Sir Mark was a great leader of science, able to inspire his students by his

enthusiastic outlook on the world. He was an ebullient and outspoken man, a great

talker with much of importance to say. I acknowledge and salute him for the very

high international profile that his research school in Canberra has long enjoyed. Our

continued success is directly attributable to him as its founder. In particular, I pay

tribute to his integrity and his great intelligence on matters by no means limited to

the fields of science. These were the hallmarks of an honourable and great

Australian, to whom I and my colleagues owe a great debt. On behalf of all of Sir

Mark’s colleagues in science, I extend to his family our deepest sympathy. Thank

you.

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DR HARRY MEDLIN The next tribute is to be given by the Honourable Dr Barry

Jones, one of the most all-round accomplished of Australian citizens of our time and

Minister for Science from 1983 to 1990. Dr Jones.

THE HONOURABLE DR BARRY JONES, former Minister for Science

Excellency, Premier, Opposition Leader, Vivian and family, friends. Apart from his

contribution to physics, Sir Mark Oliphant was an outstanding example of a public

intellectual. Public intellectuals are becoming an endangered species at a time when

Australian research is becoming less speculative and more instrumental. Research

managers are preoccupied with the bottom line, and some universities see

themselves as trading corporations. Mark Oliphant contributed to community debate

here an overseas on great issues, many of them outside his professional expertise but

to which he contributed his analytical gift, wide experience, passion and compassion.

Public intellectuals were familiar phenomena with his exact contemporaries and

those of a generation or two before. Now, in an age of super-specialisation, being a

public intellectual is deeply unfashionable and may, in fact, be a professional

obstacle. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North-Whitehead, Julian Huxley,

JBS Haldane, JD Bernal, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, J Robert Oppenheimer, Irwin

Schroedinger and Werner Heisenberg were outstanding examples of public

intellectuals who were widely reported and had an international following. In

Australia, McFarlane Burnett, Jean McNamara and Ian Clunies Ross, all born in

1899, all Victorians, notable scientists two in medicine, one in veterinary science

were public intellectuals arguing passionately on a diverse number of major issues.

Mark Oliphant was born in Adelaide in nineteen hundred and one, two years later.

In 1991 I nominated, as one of a group of seventeen public intellectuals in

Australia, outside of politics and the creative arts that was to allow for why Gough

Whitlam and Gareth weren’t on the list who argued in and outside of their

disciplines, and who could be guaranteed to get a run in the media when they

sounded off. I expressed some concern that the average age of these public

intellectuals was rather high, and that although we had more academics on the

public payroll than in any time in their history, many of them kept their heads down.

And very few of the seventeen were on the sunny side of fifty. Survivors included

17

Sir Davis McCaughey, former Governor of Victoria, Sir Zelman Cohen, twice a

Vice-Chancellor and then Governor-General, Professor Peter Karmel, economist

and promoter of education and the arts, Donald Hall, an iconoclastic thinker and

polemicist, Sir Gustav Nossel, Burnett’s disciple and successor, still making a high

profile contribution in many areas. So are Professor David Pennington, former

Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, and Adelaide’s eminent economic

historian Hugh Stretton.

I was familiar with Mark Oliphant’s name and ideas from 1949, when he made a

valuable contribution to a textbook about the challenges of the atomic age. This

symposium, set for Matriculation at Melbourne High School, including worthies

such as Bertrand Russell, Jacob Bronowsky, Sir George Thomson and Niels Bohr.

Mark Oliphant was understandably preoccupied with the potential impact of atomic

power, especially as few, if any, politicians, understood the full implications of

nuclear weaponry. As the Cold War became increasingly frigid, the danger of a

nuclear arms race and potential catastrophe seemed to be a major threat to human

life. Peace and nuclear disarmament were the causes that dominated his

contribution to public life, and as a major contribution to the Manhattan Project

codename for the development of the U-235 bombs in the US his personal anxiety

about atomic weapons was palpable. And, as Sir Eric pointed out, he’d made a

fundamental discovery which actually solved a major problem in the process that led

to the development of the hydrogen bomb, and he felt even worse about that. He

was very unlucky not to have received a Nobel prize in physics. He took an active

role in the Pugwash Movement, as has been mentioned initiated, actually, by a

professor, later Sir Joseph Rotblat, but taken up by Bertrand Russell, Einstein and

others attended its first meeting in July 1957 and many later ones.

Religion was a continuing influence. Brought up in a Christian family, he was

not religious in the conventional sense, but he shared the conviction of his friend,

Bishop Ernest Bergman, who was also not religious in the conventional sense, that

religion could be a profound force for peace and expressing universal values. He

also recognised that it could be profoundly divisive, as Northern Ireland and the

18

former Yugoslavia demonstrate. He also asserted that, while science was able to

answer many of the ‘how?’ questions, it was unable to answer the ‘why?’ questions.

He’d grown up with a conventional acceptance of White Australia, but gradually

changed position and was deeply committed to non-discrimination in immigration,

tolerance generally and respect for the pluralistic values of multiculturalism. He

was passionately committed to opening up education to ensure that natural talent

was nurtured and that poverty, remoteness and race were not barriers. He was

deeply concerned about protecting the environment against what he saw as the

predatory activities of developers. He spoke out passionately about a proposal for a

golf course at Wilpena Pound, and some other developments. I remember his

dismay at the huge burning off of the Amazonian rain forest an act of almost

Queensland-like dimensions in the 1980s. He was concerned about the

destruction of Australia’s native forests and growing (stumbles on word) senility?

(laughter) Well, that too! salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin. He was

enthusiastic about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, proposing the use of

hydrogen for fuel and urging solar energy, including solar vehicles. He was deeply

concerned about the risk of global population explosion and deeply critical of Pope

Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae of 1968, pronouncing against artificial birth

control. He was no fan of Pope John Paul II in this particular area, at least. He was

also concerned that population growth in Australia, especially in cities, would

impose unacceptable stress on the environment and our biota. He was long ahead of

his time, like his near contemporaries Nugget Coombs and William Charles

Wentworth IV, in supporting recognition of Aboriginal land rights. He was a strong

supporter of affirmative action and often pointed out that his home state of South

Australia had led the way in granting a franchise for women in 1894, but he saw that

there was a long way to go. He was a cautious civil libertarian who disliked

censorship in principle but was deeply disturbed in practice by pornography,

especially involving children or cruelty. He was deeply opposed to the death

penalty. He thought that all wars were obscene and opposed the Vietnam War as

part of a general category.

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Science funding. I well remember a demonstration in Canberra which I

actually, although I was the Minister, paradoxically, had some hand in orchestrating

(laughter) at the opening of the National Science Centre in 1988, in which a

number of Australia’s most eminent scientists, including a handful of octogenarian

and septuagenarian knights, waved placards and possibly even fists so that Bob

Hawke could be aware that our scientific base was slipping away and needed more

funding. Mark Oliphant was one of that distinguished group. Extra funding was

provided in 1989. No economic rationalist, he deeply deplored the failure of

Australian government and investors to provide appropriate support for Australian

industry and innovation. He cast his last vote for ‘yes’ in the Republican

Referendum on the 6th November 1999. He thought it was time.

Mark Oliphant was both Australian patriot and passionate internationalist, a

complex character who had moods of optimism and deep pessimism, exhilaration

and frustration. He was preoccupied about the human condition, the relief of

suffering, the conquest of ignorance and prejudice. He always thought globally. He

was the last survivor of that great period in physics when Ernest Rutherford was at

the Cavendish Laboratory. He was sustained throughout by a loving family life.

Australia is very greatly in his debt.

DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, I now invite Ms Vivienne Wilson,

Mr Michael Wilson, Mrs Monica Oliphant, Ms Katherine Oliphant and Ms Michelle

Oliphant to come on stage, whereupon Ms Wilson will speak on behalf of Sir Mark’s

children and then her son, Mr Michael Wilson, will speak on behalf of the

grandchildren.

So members of the Oliphant family now making their way to the front of

Bonython Hall to represent various generations of the Oliphant family.

JD MS VIVIENNE WILSON, daughter of Sir Mark Oliphant Your Excellencies,

Premier, Leader of the Opposition, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to

thank Premier Olsen for this opportunity to celebrate my father’s life. I would also

like to thank Swita Arwon of the Premier’s Department and my son Michael for all

the work they have put into organising this occasion.

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I am going to speak about my father, Sir Mark Oliphant, on behalf of his children,

and I also include here my brother Michael’s widow, Monica Oliphant, a member of

our family my father loved dearly and whose scientific achievements he was very

proud of. My parents had three children. Their only biological child, Geoffrey,

became ill with meningitis four weeks before his third birthday. This was in 1933,

before the days of antibiotics, and Geoffrey died within 24 hours of the onset of his

illness. It was a terrible tragedy for my parents, and one they never got over. My

parents could have no more children of their own. Their doctor suggested adoption

as an alternative.

END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B: TAPE 2 SIDE A

So, as many of you know, my brother Michael and I were our parents’ adopted

children. In those days, adoption meant complete separation from one’s birth

family, denied the right by the authorities to any information whatever about one’s

birth parents and with very little likelihood of ever making contact with any

members of one’s biological family. This was certainly the case with Michael and

me, and I can speak from our personal experience. Being cut off forever from your

birth family is a lifelong grief, something which affects you profoundly your entire

life, and you never get over those deep feelings of loss.

Our birth fathers were men of their time. When the women to whom they were

not married conceived us, those men abandoned our mothers, who had no alternative

but to part with us, but we were fortunate in the father who chose us as his children.

We couldn’t have had a better father than the one who brought us up. Fair, kind,

generous and loving, as far as I can remember he never once chastised or punished

us. I’m not going to say that he was a perfect human being. I, along with many of

you here today, know that he wasn’t. He was impulsive and temperamental, he had

a tendency to ride roughshod over those who disagreed with him, he was hopeless

with money and he uprooted his family many times with never a thought of how it

might affect them.

Dad was, above all, a family man. Like most men of his generation, he spent long

hours at work. He really loved his work, but also, when my brother and I were

young, there was a war on and scientists were seconded to the effort and winning the

21

war was paramount. Unlike the fathers of many of my friends, pubs, clubs, sport or

lodge were not for him. He partook fully in the household chores and all other

family activities. He cooked and washed up and he could fix anything, from a

broken doll to a broken washing machine. He read us stories and did magic things

for my childhood birthday parties, and he took us on picnics which he really didn’t

enjoy. We all sat on a rug on the ground and he sat in the car. (laughter) Our father

always encouraged us in our quest for knowledge. He responded to our questions

about the world around us by showing us how to look things up. He taught us how

to use atlases, dictionaries, encyclopædias and reference books. We were fortunate

to be in a household surrounded by books. He gave me my first dictionary,

thesaurus and complete works of Shakespeare, all of which, despite many moves, I

still have.

As I was growing up, I was probably not fully aware that my father was ahead of

his time in his attitude to equality of the sexes. I was not brought up to think that

just because I was a girl I couldn’t ride a bike, climb a tree, hit a ball or achieve at

school. I was given the freedom to do all the things my brother did.

After living in Britain for 23 years, my parents returned to Australia in 1950, my

father having earlier been encouraged by Ben Chifley to commit himself to the

fledgling Australian National University in what was then a rather primitive

Canberra. I was twelve years old and I attended the local co-educational state high

school. Here I became aware that many of the clever girls in my class were denied

the chance of a tertiary education because their families’ often limited resources

were reserved for their less bright and lazier brothers. That was an attitude that

never existed in my family. My family believed that girls and boys had the right to

the same educational opportunities, and that if you qualified for university entry and

you wanted to go, you had an equal right to go. My father was very proud of the

fact that both his children were university graduates.

My father was a good and faithful husband to my mother. They met as teenagers

and were married for nearly 63 years. When my mother became ill in 1984, my

father willingly and lovingly looked after her. He said that she’d looked after him

for 60 years and always done what he wanted, gone where he wanted, and now it

22

was his turn. In the three years my mother was in a nursing home, my father spent

hours with her almost every day, and was with her when she died.

My father was an extremely good father and a wonderful grandfather.

Circumstances that neither my brother Michael’s widow, Monica, nor I could have

predicted resulted in us bringing up our three children as single parents an

undeservedly denigrated sector of Australian society. Because of this, my father

was in many ways both grandfather and father to his three grandchildren, and they

have grown up to be exceptional young people who were very special to their

grandfather, and of whom he was very, very proud.

What will I remember of my father in recent years? He came back to Canberra

from Adelaide after my mother’s death in 1987 and lived in a granny flat we had

built onto my house. My father, my son and I lived as a three-generation family,

supporting one another in various ways. That is not to say that it was always easy

and harmonious. It wasn’t. Michael and I remember the robust conversations

around the dinner table over the past thirteen years. My father always liked to

provoke people into argument and lively discussion, and with members of the

family it was no different. For example, as you may know, with a few exceptions,

my father was contemptuous of politics and politicians and would loudly proclaim

these views. It mattered not to him that my livelihood over the past 25 years has

been involved in the provision of information to Federal Members of Parliament, or

that Michael for some years had political aspirations. And Dad was forthright in his

criticism of Michael’s chosen field of university study, political science. ‘Not fit to

be called a science,’ he proclaimed. (laughter) ‘Why don’t you study something

useful!’ (louder laughter) Well into his nineties my father enjoyed a spirited

discussion. I think one could say he wasn’t a person who was prepared to grow old

gracefully.

His mind remained sharp. When he was 95 he was asked his advice on what it

took to lead a fulfilling life, even into his 90s. His succinct reply: ‘Retain

curiosity.’ And I think that pretty well sums up his response to life.

Until the death of my father I had never been closely involved in a family death.

My brother Michael died of cancer in 1971 aged 35 when my son Michael was only

23

a few weeks old, and because of poor health I was unable to travel from Canberra to

Melbourne to attend my brother’s funeral. My mother died in January 1987 when I

was walking in the Grand Canyon, and by the time the news reached me the funeral

had been held and I had no chance to be part of it. So the death of my father is the

only family death I have been fully involved in, and I am very grateful I was able to

be. In recent years I feared that he, too, might die while I was away and that I

wouldn’t be able to say goodbye properly and grieve fully for him. As he and I had

planned, the family was able to have a small, simple, quiet farewell for him before

we had to share our loss with the rest of the nation.

About a week after our simple family funeral on the 17th

July, I received a folder

of material from the Canberra crematorium. I was asked to notify them about what

I wanted done with the remains of Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant. That really hit

me between the eyes. Was I to think that all that remained of this larger than life

person who was my father was a handful of ashes? But very quickly I thought, ‘Of

course not.’ What remain are the memories and the photographs, but also, in my

father’s case, much more than that. Organisations, particularly in South Australia,

that bear his name, such as the South Australian Science Teachers’ Association

Mark Oliphant Awards, the Flinders Medical Centre Foundation, Sir Mark Oliphant

Round Table, the Mark Oliphant Conservation Park in the Adelaide Hills and Mount

Oliphant in the Flinders Ranges an area of great spiritual significance to my

father. Then there are all the organisations of which he was Patron, and great

institutions like the Australian National University and the Australian Academy of

Science world class institutions which probably wouldn’t have got off the ground

without my father’s initiative, energy and commitment. And there’s Stewart

Cockburn and David Ellyard’s excellent biography. And now we are to have the

Mark Oliphant Gallery in the Investigator Science and Technology Center in

Adelaide.

You may ask, ‘Why no state funeral for a favourite South Australian son?’

Because he explicitly forbade it. He often said to me that if I allowed it he would

come back to haunt me. (laughter) That always amused me, coming from one who

didn’t believe in a conventional God and who certainly didn’t believe in life after

24

death! He left instructions about what was to happen when he died rather typical

of him, really, instructions from beyond the grave. His instructions about no fuss

when he died illustrated what sort of person my father was. He did enjoy some of

the trappings of Vice-Regal life and did like recognition for his achievements, but he

was basically a humble, simple man who didn’t think he was exceptional or special

just someone who’d been lucky. Included in these final instructions was that there

was to be no memorial service. Well, we defied him on the memorial service bit,

and I’m so glad we did.

Finally, I’d like to share with you his simple thoughts on death, and I quote him:

‘That which is buried in a grave or incinerated in a furnace is but a cast-off vehicle

which has served its purpose. It is not the person.’ Well, it is the person, my father,

whose life we are celebrating today. Thank you.

MR MICHAEL WILSON, grandson of Sir Mark Oliphant Your Excellency, Mr

Premier, Professor Medlin, Professor Weigold, Leader of the Opposition,

distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I speak to you this morning on behalf of

Sir Mark Oliphant’s grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. On my family’s

behalf I would like to thank those who have spoken today for their generous tributes,

and also thank the many other Australians who have expressed their feelings for Sir

Mark in the weeks since his death. It is overwhelmingly moving for us to see that so

many people, from all walks of life, were somehow inspired by him in the same way

that we, his family, were inspired.

My grandfather died on Bastille Day. I think this would have appealed to his

sense of humour and to the revolutionary in his spirit. Although it’s hard to grasp

such time scales, he was born in the year of Federation, which also always seemed

appropriate to me, because this special country, its great potential and the creative

spirit of its people meant so much to him.

Kathy, Michelle and I were extremely privileged to have had our grandfather so

closely involved in all our lives from infancy to adulthood. His strong influence

will always be with us, and I don’t think that it’s any accident that the three of us

now devote our working lives to fields that I think he would have classified in the

category of ‘things that really matter’. Kathy is a very gifted teacher, Michele is a

25

strong and dedicated youth worker and I now work in the environment policy field.

He was also particularly proud of the important work of my Aunt Monica, also a

distinguished scientist in the field of alternative energy.

To us, Grandpa was kind, loving, generous and had a tremendous sense of fun.

He could recite nonsense verse as accurately and easily as he could recite

Shakespeare or the Latin Mass. But especially in our teens and young adulthood he

would challenge us to think about and defend our values and beliefs. He was a

lifelong activist and wanted to see that sort of spirit in his grandchildren. He was

the sort of grandfather you could take along to an anti-nuclear rally, a women’s

rights action or a world peace campaign. This isn’t to say that he always necessarily

agreed with the causes we felt were important, but he loved to see people standing

up for what they believed in. When we were children he seemed to us a large and

vigorous man with a booming, infectious laugh and a playful, mischievous sense of

humour. He would take us for long walks and make up marvellous stories. As

adults, we remember the warmth and generosity of his nature, his concern for our

happiness and many long evenings with him in deep discussion or gentle reflection

about his life and the people he had known.

My grandfather was certainly aware of his place in the world, but his modesty

was genuine and he genuinely believed his achievements were due to luck, more

than intelligence or hard work. He was incredibly loyal to his friends, his staff and

to those who inspired him. It was fascinating to hear him speak about his colleagues

and acquaintances people like Bertrand Russell, Bragg, Bohr, Curie, Einstein,

Lawrence, Cockcroft, Kapitza and, of course, his great mentor, Lord Rutherford.

And there are many people here with us today who inspired him with their strength

of character, talent, leadership and intellect: Clyde Cameron, Lowitje O’Donoghue,

Clemens Leske, Beryl Kimber, Barry Jones and Barbara Hardy, to name just a few.

I think what inspired me most was his approach to life. He had his share of

tragedy and disappointment. He lost two children and his beloved partner. In his

life he came up against the short-sightedness of decisionmakers and those holding

the purse strings who would frustrate his passionate vision for what was achievable.

Many causes for which he fought were ultimately lost, but he was someone who

26

would come through grief or, when defeated, just shrug his shoulders and move onto

the next challenge with good humour intact and an appreciation of his good fortune.

There are things, I believe, which keep a person young. In my grandfather’s case,

I think it was his passionate, childlike curiosity about the world and how it worked.

His was a life of learning from beginning to end, and as an educator himself, it is not

surprising that education was probably the issue closest to his heart. Towards the

end of his life he was disturbed at what was not happening in science, education and

industry in Australia. He always believed that, as a people, we could make or do

anything, and he despaired at the lack of support governments and industry give to

research and development of outstanding Australian ideas and inventions. When he

was young, Australia’s best and brightest had to go overseas for further study,

because the opportunity for post-graduate research just wasn’t available here. It

disturbed and disappointed him greatly that, in recent years, our best and brightest

are once again leaving our shores because their efforts aren’t sufficiently recognised

or rewarded and the opportunities for them here are limited.

My grandfather taught his children and grandchildren many things: the

importance of honesty and integrity, to always try to do what you believe to be right,

even if it means going against the tide of public opinion. In one of his last

conversations with my cousin Kathy, he said, ‘You and I are lucky because we are

able to do a job that we feel passionate about. I can’t imagine what it would be like

to do something you did not feel that way about. Horrible.’ Thank you.

DR HARRY MEDLIN Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for both your attendance

and your attention, and would you please stand while the family is escorted from the

hall, and would you then all kindly proceed to the adjacent marquee for

refreshments.

(Music recommences.)

So the family is now leaving Bonython Hall and they will make their way through

to the robing room where the grandson, granddaughter indeed, both

granddaughters will give a news conference. The ceremony ending on a very

family note, and earlier a colourful note from the former Science Minister, Mr

Barry Jones, saying that if Sir Mark had been around today as a public

intellectual he may have been deeply unfashionable and may have found that

27

being a public intellectual may have been a professional impediment to him, given

that some universities see themselves now as trading corporations. So, to the

strains of the Zephyr String Quartet, we’ll now leave Bonython Hall at Adelaide

University, having shared the final farewell to a famous son of South Australia,

and return you to normal programming.

TAPE ENDS.