December 2019 – 3Rd January 2020: End of Year Closure
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PATRON: The Hon Linda Dessau AC PRESIDENT: Mr David Zerman Governor of Victoria December Events: 12th December: Climate Extremes: Present and Future With Professor Andy Pitman AO The RSV Research Medal Lecture & End of Year Dinner 25th December 2019 – 3rd January 2020: End of Year Closure February 2020 Advance Notice: 13th February: The State Control Centre: Forecasting Victoria’s Extreme Weather 27th February: Diamonds: an Implant’s Best Friend December 2019 Newsletter Print Post Approved 100009741 The Royal Society of Victoria Inc. 8 La Trobe Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000 Tel. (03) 9663 5259 rsv.org.au December Events Climate Extremes: Present and Future Thursday, 12th December from 6:30pm Climate extremes are events such as heatwaves, extreme rainfall, cyclones and drought that affect humans, our natural environment and multiple socio-economic systems. The evidence is now unambiguous that some climate extremes are responding to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, yet how some other extremes are responding is proving more complex. Join Professor Andy Pitman to explore the evidence for how and why climate extremes are changing, and what we can anticipate about how they will change in the future. The limits to our current capability and how climate science is trying to address those limits via new approaches to modelling will be discussed. About the speaker: Professor Andy Pitman AO is a Professor in climate science at the University of New South Wales. He is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEx), which brings together five Australian universities (including Monash University and the University of Melbourne) and a suite of international partner organisations to understand the behaviour of climate extremes and how they directly affect Australian natural and economic systems. Andy has broad interests extending across climate modelling, climate change, climate extremes and land cover change. He has been a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and on the Copenhagen Diagnosis. He won the Priestley Medal in 2004, the AMOS Medal in 2009, the NSW Climate Scientist of the Year in 2010 and was elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2016 and is a Fellow of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. He has served on multiple federal government reviews. He was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) in 2019. Professor Pitman is the 2019 recipient of the Royal Society of Victoria’s Medal for Excellence in Scientific Research. Places limited, bookings essential! Formal function to follow from 7:30pm. Register online now at https://rsv.org.au/events/climate-extremes/, call or email the RSV office to secure your place: 9663 5259, [email protected]. Fully subscribed RSV Members can access discounted tickets by registering via their online profile, or entering their promotional code in the online ticketing window. Page 2 of 16 December Events RSV Research Medal Presentation and 160th Anniversary Dinner Thursday, 12th December from 6:30pm RSV members and their guests are invited to join us to commemorate 160 years since the official opening of the Royal Society of Victoria’s Hall on 10th December, 1859 by Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria. The evening will begin with the presentation of the Society’s Medal for Excellence in Scientific Research, now in its sixtieth year, to the 2019 Medallist Professor Andrew Pitman along with the Medallist’s Lecture. Following the presentation, members and their guests will celebrate an outstanding year of science engagement with Victorian communities at a special cocktail dinner function in the Burke and Wills Room, featuring short presentations from our President and a small selection of the RSV’s many wonderful partners and collaborators. The dress code is for business attire or evening wear. Proceeds from the function will be directed to support the Society’s growing science and outreach programs. Places limited, bookings essential!. Register online now at https://rsv.org.au/events/rsv-160/, call or email the RSV office to secure your place: 9663 5259, [email protected]. Page 3 of 16 News & Notices Nominations for RSV Membership events hosted across the entire state, all year round and during National Science Week, the Nominations for membership of the Society Society can be very proud of the work we have been received on behalf of: support through our membership. On behalf Mr Nathan Benjamin DI NOIA, Student, RMIT of all members, I convey my sincere thanks University to our team, who undertake program Mr Tim E BLOOMFIELD, Environmental management, governance support, Consultant on Invasive Species partnership work, event creation, Mr Glen GOULD, Retired Communications coordination and management, grant and Satellite Engineer program administration and acquittal, Mr Shane RAMAGE, Licensed Surveyor, volunteer management and generally keep Surveyor General Victoria, Department of the RSV show on the road in what can Environment, Land, Water and Planning sometimes be very trying circumstances. You Mr Grant MILDWATERS, Student, RMIT do wonderful work! University I look forward to sharing the outcomes of our Unless Members request a ballot, these will efforts in the 2019 Annual Report. be considered for election by Council and if Meanwhile, I wish all our members, elected, will be announced at the Ordinary supporters and partners all the very best for Meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria to be the holiday season and a prosperous year held on 13th February 2020. Recently elected ahead in 2020. members who have not yet signed the - David Zerman, President. Society’s membership book are warmly invited to attend the February meeting to be The RSV’s Mystery Portrait – formally welcomed as members. Please inform the office if you plan to attend, so Solved! we can prepare your membership certificate and welcome pack for collection. From the President It has been an amazing year for the Society, stepping up to promote scientific work and seek the engagement and participation of the whole Victorian community in the excitement of endeavour. Our end of year function is almost upon us and will be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the Society’s many achievements over the course of 2019, thanks to the efforts of our members, volunteers and partners. I hope to see as many members and guests as possible there to enjoy the evening, which features the Research Medal presentation to Professor Andy Pitman AO and his talk on work in climate extremes. Please see the “Do you know this man?” The RSV’s mystery related item earlier in the newsletter for portrait was shared with our last newsletter and details. the online community to seek help with identification. Recently the Council received reports from As a small, volunteer-led organisation for our hard-working staff on the outcomes of all most of our history, our capacities for record this work, particularly the outputs of the keeping have waxed and waned; the details Inspiring Victoria science engagement of our past are most faithfully recorded in the program. With hundreds of community Page 4 of 16 News & Notices memories of our members, past and present, “I am Sir Frank and the time for an update to our official Macfarlane Burnet’s histories is most definitely overdue. successor as Director of We do have plenty of resources to offer the the Walter and Eliza Hall intrepid historian. The Royal Society of Institute. Victoria’s long history of convening the As such, I knew Sir Mac science community and promoting science in very well for over 30 our state has contributed to a burgeoning years and also had the archive of documents and some rare books chance to view several portraits of him deposited with the State Library of Victoria, painted down the years. who provide public access for the benefit of I am quite sure that the Mystery Portrait on researchers. Meanwhile, we still maintain page 13 of your November Newsletter is not quite a few curious documents and objects of Sir Mac. from our past, squirrelled away in various shelves, cabinets and cupboards, our small It is obviously a good painting and therefore archive room and the squeezy spaces probably a good likeness of the sitter. beneath the raked seating of the Ellery It genuinely isn’t at all like Sir Mac (at any Theatre. age). One such object is this portrait from the mid- Is there a possibility that it is Lord Casey? 20th century, painted in 1961 by Orlando Dutton, depicting a scholar, his medals and a I only knew him as an older man but the faint microscope, without any name provided. moustache, forehead and hair suggest the Current and recent Councillors have not possibility. definitively identified the sitter, although there Best of luck! was some speculation about him being Sir Frank Marfarlane-Burnet OM AK KBE FRS Yours sincerely, FAA FRSNZ. Speculation on the medals Gus Nossal.” depicted have ranged from Mac Burnet’s Nobel prize (1960) to his inaugural Australian of the Year trophy (1961). Stumped, we put out a call to the science community to help us solve the puzzle, and we’ve had an enormously helpful response through email and social media channels. Not Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet Many have suspected or asserted that the portrait is of Further leads on Twitter from our colleagues Mac Burnet, and we shared the at WEHI (above) support this position. Sir portrait broadly in that context. Mac was not one to cultivate a moustache, The closest likeness of Sir Mac plainly, and his features were distinctly to the portrait that we could find emphasised by artists Dargie and Pugh in a is provided to the left, from manner entirely dissimilar to the Dutton 1959. portrait’s subject. However, a welcome email from RSV Fellow Orlando Dutton (1894 – 1962) Professor Sir Gustav Nossal puts that So, let’s take a look at the artist.