Fellows' biographical memoirs

Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science and Fellowship of the Australian College of Education are formal recognition of Hanna Neumann's impact on a country she had first set foot in only in August 1963. But then, Hanna Neumann was a remarkable person. Throughout her life she had won the love and respect of many people.

Professor Hans Buchdahl FAA transformed geometric optics with his systematic aberration coefficients, made lasting contributions to general relativity and was a respected teacher of thermodynamics.

Hans Freeman was a leading figure in X-ray crystallography and other advanced X-ray techniques in Australia and internationally. He played an important role in gaining access for Australian scientists to international facilities such as synchrotron radiation sources at the dawning of the era of ‘Big Science’.

Henry Oliver Lancaster made landmark discoveries linking UV radiation to melanoma and rubella to congenital deafness, while transforming mathematical statistics.

Professor Harry Wallace FAA was a nematologist who pioneered research into how nematodes move through soil and interact with plants, providing the blueprint that controlled Australia's devastating cereal cyst nematode.

With the death of Herbert Cole ('Nugget') Coombs on 29 October 1997, Australia lost its greatest public servant, a man who spent his life as an employee of the Commonwealth initiating major civilizing activities in economic and cultural fields, and after his retirement became a great champion of the rights of Aboriginal Australians.

Herbert George Andrewartha was born in Perth on 21 December 1907, the second of three children of George and Elsie Andrewartha. His father was a primary-school teacher, later a headmaster. The family moved often to country towns in Western Australia where his father was posted, but they maintained a base in a small farm at Gosnells, about 40 km from Perth.

Bert Green's influence on the development of theoretical science in Australia during the nearly fifty years he lived here cannot be overestimated. From the time he arrived in Adelaide in July 1951, until his death on 16 February 1999, he produced articles and books covering topics as diverse as particle physics, environmental science and neurophysiology. In each of the areas in which he worked, his contributions were always marked by erudition and originality.

Newton Barber was a distinguished botanist and geneticist who published widely across experimental cytology, taxonomy, genetics, ecology, forestry, biogeography, palaeobotany and mycology.

Professor Horace Waring FAA pioneered marsupial physiology research in Australia – establishing field stations, training generations of zoologists, and opening up adrenal, reproductive and ecological studies of native fauna.