Fellows' biographical memoirs

Professor S. Warren Carey (as he preferred to be known) personified a philosophy of synthesis/integration that lies at the heart of large-scale disciplines such as geology and astronomy.

This short memoir of Sir Sydney Sunderland is based on autobiographical information assembled by Sir Sydney, on a number of informal discussions the author had with him during the last five years of his life, and on the more accessible public documentation of his many activities associated with the University of Melbourne and the Federal and State Governments. In these notes I am more concerned with providing a picture of the kind of man Sydney Sunderland was, his science, and his contributions to Australian universities and to the community, than with presenting exhaustive detail of his many achievements.

Walter Boas was born in Berlin on 10 February 1904 and was the only child of Adele (née Reiche) and Arthur Boas. His death on 12 May 1982, after a short illness, came as a shock to a very large number of friends and colleagues in the scientific, university, metallurgical and engineering communities. To all these communities, Walter Boas had made outstanding contributions since his arrival in Australia in 1938.

William Hayes, physician, microbiologist and geneticist, made his own special contribution to modern genetics and molecular biology in a manner quite different from that of any of his contemporaries. Bill, as he was universally known, was an unlikely candidate for such distinction. It is interesting to speculate on the events that transformed someone likely to have had a distinguished but still traditional medical career into a world renowned scientist who influenced a whole generation of microbiologists and geneticists.

William Rowan Browne was born on 11 December 1884 at Lislea, County Derry, Ireland, the sixth of eight children born to James and Henrietta Browne, National School teachers. On both sides he descended from families long-established in that country though, by his own account, without particular eminence for learning or public service.

Bill Williams was born in Fulham, London, on 18 April 1913, the only child of Thomas and Clara Williams. His father suffered from asthma and so had left Wales, where he had been a coalminer, to work in London but at what has not been ascertained. Whatever it was, his mother found it necessary to work as a midwife and charlady to ensure that Bill received a good education. Having no siblings, Bill spent much of his childhood at the home of his lifelong friend and scientific colleague David Goodall, whose family he sometimes accompanied on their annual holidays.