(04/07/1939 – 06/06/2025)
Professor Graeme Cox was elected to the Academy in 1990 for his contributions to bacterial physiology using the techniques of biochemistry and molecular biology.
Professor Cox was born and educated in Melbourne, obtaining his BSc (1962) and PhD (1967) from the University of Melbourne. In 1967, he took a position as biochemistry Research Fellow in the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at the Australian National University in Canberra. He remained at JCSMR for his entire career, as Fellow, Senior Fellow then Leader of the Membrane Biochemistry Group.
Professor Cox gave his time generously to the Academy as a member of many committees, including the National Committee for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
(13/11/1939 – 05/07/2025)
Emeritus Professor David Boger was elected to the Academy in 1993 for his work in viscoelastic fluid mechanics. An internationally recognised expert in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, his work led to a missing link in the field: the discovery of constant viscosity elastic liquids, named Boger fluids. Professor Boger’s work on a technique called ‘dry disposal’ helped reduce the volume of waste, and therefore the environmental impact, in the alumina processing industry.
Professor Boger was born in Pennsylvania, US. He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University and his MS and PhD, both also in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Illinois. In 1965, he moved to Australia, taking a position as Lecturer at Monash University. He remained at Monash for several years, progressing to Senior Lecturer then Reader in Engineering. In 1982, he moved to the University of Melbourne, where he was Professor of Chemical Engineering, including head of department, Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (Research) Faculty of Engineering), then Emeritus Professor from 2009.
Professor Boger was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (1989), the Royal Society (2007), the Royal Society of Victoria (2007), the Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society (2010), the US Society of Rheology (2016), a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (2017) and a Bragg Member of the Royal Institution of Australia (2009). He won many awards, medals and prizes, including the Eureka Prize for Environmental Research (1993), the Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture (2000), the Prime Minister's Prize for Science (2005) and the Centenary Medal (2001). He was also made Companion of the Order of Australia (2024).
Professor Boger gave his time generously to the Academy, including as a Council Member for Physical Sciences (1999–2002).
(8/02/1940 – 20/07/2025)
Professor Rodney James Baxter was a mathematical physicist, well known for the Yang-Baxter equation. He was elected to the Academy in 1977.
Professor Baxter was born and spent his childhood in London. As he describes in his autobiography, An Accidental Academic, no other family member had gone to university, and it was not something he had considered until it was suggested by a schoolteacher that he attend Cambridge University. He passed the scholarship exam and commenced his mathematics journey as a college scholar.
After graduating from Cambridge, Professor Baxter was offered a PhD scholarship at the ANU. His studies led him into statistical mechanics, the field in which he continued for the rest of his career. On completion of his PhD in 1964, Professor Baxter took a role with a petroleum company in London. Prior to his departure from Australia, Professor Kenneth Le Couteur FAA had told him he would be welcome back at the ANU, and in 1965 Professor Baxter did indeed return to pursue a research fellowship.
In 1968, Professor Baxter moved with his wife, Elizabeth, to the US and took a position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a year at MIT, Professor Le Couteur hand delivered to Professor Baxter an advertisement for a tenured post at the ANU, to which he was appointed in 1970.
On Professor Le Couteur’s retirement from the position, Professor Baxter became head of ANU’s Theoretical Physics Department until his own retirement from the role in 2002.
Professor Baxter gave his time generously to the Academy, including as Member and Chair of the Sectional Committee for Mathematics.
Professor Baxter was awarded the Academy’s Pawsey Medal (1975) and Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal (1983). He received the Boltzmann Medal from the Commission on Statistical Physics/IUPAP (1980), the American Physical Society’s Dannie Heineman Prize (1987) and Lars Onsager Prize (2006), the Harrie Massey Medal of the Australian Institute of Physics (1994), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Lars Onsager Medal, Lecture and Professorship (2006) and the Royal Society’s Royal Medal (2013).
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982 and received their Research Fellowship in 1991. He was awarded the University of Cambridge’s ScD in 1984.
Alongside the many fascinating history of science articles published in our journal, Historical Records of Australian Science, we publish biographical memoirs – biographies of deceased Fellows commissioned by the Academy. We are very grateful to all the authors who go to great lengths to make these articles as complete as possible.
Recent biographical memoir:
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