Fellows' biographical memoirs

Gavin Brown was a distinguished mathematician and was a key contributor to the area of harmonic analysis.

Geoffrey Burnstock was a biomedical scientist who gained renown for his discovery that adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP) functions as an extracellular signalling molecule.

Geoffrey Ivan Opat, Professor of Experi­mental Physics at the University of Mel­bourne, died suddenly at home on 7 March 2002, at the age of 66. He was one of Australia’s most versatile and highly respected physicists, scholars and teachers and his death came as a profound shock to the staff of the University of Melbourne and to the physics community in Australia.

Geoffrey Malcolm Badger was Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Adelaide from 1955 to 1964 and, after serving briefly as a member of the CSIRO Executive, Vice-Chancellor from 1967 to 1977. Elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1960, he served on the Council and was President of the Academy from 1974 to 1978. He was President of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1965 and Chairman of the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC) from 1977 to 1982. He was admitted to the order of Australia (AO) in 1975 and knighted in 1979.

Adrian Horridge is famous for his pioneering studies of invertebrate vision. At the Australian National University, he established a thriving department of neurobiology, which became one of the world’s leading entities in this field.

George Rogers was a pioneer in the application of electron microscopy to hair and wool ultrastructure and to that of the hair follicle, contributing to our knowledge of the molecular structure of keratins and the biochemistry of keratinisation.

Professor Ken Cavill's research lay at the interface of chemistry and biology, focused on insect venoms and compounds with attractant and repellent properties. He discovered entirely new classes of terpenoid compounds and was awarded the first ever personal chair by UNSW.

G. E. (Tim) Wall was one of Australia’s leading algebraists, whose work intersected many of the important algebraic themes of his era (roughly 1960–95).

Graeme Caughley studied the interactions between large mammalian herbivores and the environments they occupy. The pattern of population growth that can be predicted theoretically from such a relationship is both complex and variable. He argued that the dynamics of mammalian herbivore populations are comprehensible only in terms of an interactive relationship between the herbivores and vegetation. He further argued that efficient management of such systems requires an understanding of the underlying mechanisms whereby the animals react to the plants and in turn the plants react dynamically to the effects of grazing.

Bill Ellis made pioneering discoveries in the field of low-frequency radio observations, focused on radio waves in the ionosphere and the detection of radio emissions from the Sun, the galactic disk and Jupiter.