Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales
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Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 2017 Volume 150 Part 2 Numbers 465 & 466 “... for the encouragement of studies and investigations in Science Art Literature and Philosophy ...” THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW SOUTH WALES OFFICE BEARERS FOR 2017 Patron His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Ret’d) Governor of New South Wales President Em. Prof. David Brynn Hibbert BSc PhD CChem FRSC FRACI FRSN Vice Presidents Dr Donald Hector AM BE(Chem) PhD FIChemE FIEAust FAICD FRSN Prof. Ian Sloan AO PhD FAA FRSN Ms Judith Wheeldon AM BS (Wis) MEd (Syd) FACE FRSN Hon. Secretary (Ed.) Em. Prof. Robert Marks MEngSci ResCert PhD (Stan) FRSN Hon. Secretary (Gen.) Dr Herma Büttner Dr.rer.nat FRSN Hon. Treasurer Mr Richard Wilmott Hon. Librarian Dr Ragbir Bhathal PhD FSAAS Hon. Web Master A/Prof. Chris Bertram PhD FRSN Councillors Dr Erik W. Aslaksen MSc (ETH) PhD FRSN Dr Mohammad Choucair PhD Em. Prof. Robert Clancy PhD FRACP FRSN Dr Desmond Griffin AM PhD FRSN Mr John Hardie BSc (Syd) FGS MACE FRSN Em. Prof. Stephen Hill AM PhD FTSE FRSN Em. Prof. Heinrich Hora DipPhys Dr.rer.nat DSc FAIP FInstP CPhys FRSN Prof. E James Kehoe PhD FRSN Prof. Bruce Milthorpe PhD FRSN Hon. Prof. Ian Wilkinson PhD FRSN Southern Highlands Ms Anne Wood FRSN Branch Representative Executive Office The Association Specialists EDITORIAL BOARD Em. Prof. Robert Marks BE MEngSci ResCert MS PhD (Stan) FRSN – Hon. Editor Prof. Richard Banati MD PhD FRSN Prof. Michael Burton BA MA MMaths (Cantab) PhD (Edinb) FASA FAIP FRSN Dr Donald Hector AM BE(Chem) PhD (Syd) FIChemE FIEAust FAICD PRSN Em. Prof. David Brynn Hibbert BSc PhD (Lond) CChem FRSC FRACI FRSN Dr Michael Lake BSc (Syd) PhD (Syd) Dr Nick Lomb BSc (Syd) PhD (Syd) FASA FRSA Prof. Timothy Schmidt BSc (Syd) PhD (Cantab) FRSN Website: http://www.royalsoc.org.au The Society traces its origin to the Philosophical Society of Australasia founded in Sydney in 1821. The Society exists for “the encouragement of studies and investigations in Science Art Literature and Philosophy”: publishing results of scientific investigations in its Journal and Proceedings; conducting monthly meetings; awarding prizes and medals; and by liaising with other learned societies within Australia and internationally. Membership is open to any person whose application is acceptable to the Society. Subscriptions for the Journal are also accepted. The Society welcomes, from members and non-members, manuscripts of research and review articles in all branches of science, art, literature and philosophy for publication in the Journal and Proceedings. 2 Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 150, part 2, 2017, pp. 139–142. ISSN 0035-9173/17/020139-04 Editorial Robert E. Marks e live in exciting times. No sooner had on the impacts of the new environmental Wthis year’s Nobel prize for physics been flows on the Snowy River, is Wayne Erskine. awarded to the team leaders of the LIGO The paper had been reviewed and revised and gravity-wave observatories that had earlier accepted, when I learnt of Professor Erskine’s in the year reported the first detections of sudden death. His co-authors have written gravity waves — of two black holes fusing an obituary of him, which appears at the (what do they do? holes colliding?) — than end of the paper. Virgo, a third observatory, helped to triangu- The second submitted paper is a study late the source of a new gravity-wave burst: from across the Pacific, into the use of dis- two neutron stars colliding (definitely col- tance sensing on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), liding) to form a black hole. Whereas not that sad example of a land now completely much if any radiation escapes a black-hole denuded of the extinct Rapa Nui Palm encounter, neutron stars colliding produce (Jubaea sp.) and all other endemic trees. light, radio waves, X-rays, and gamma rays, (Hunt and Lipo, 2006). which can be independently observed. But The third and fourth submitted papers are not yet neutrinos. This was accomplished of historical interest, introducing a long-lost with optical observatories and others cor- report by the geologist (and 1888 Clarke roborating the event. Medalist of the Royal Society), Fr. Julian A hundred years after Einstein’s prediction Tenison-Woods (1832-1889), one of sev- of these ripples in space-time, mankind has eral nineteenth-century clergyman-scientists developed a completely new way to observe active in the Society. As Roderick O’Brien activity in the cosmos. Moreover, the obser- describes it, he came across the report as the vations from the neutron-star encounter appendix to an 1885 report published in appear to confirm predictions that elements the Straits Settlements (Singapore). It is here heavier than iron — gold, platinum, ura- reproduced, and joins 15 earlier papers by nium and many of the rare-earth elements — Tenison-Woods in the Journal, from 1877 are created during neutron star collisions. to 1888. This issue contains an absorbing report Ann Moyal, a more recent Royal Society from Brynn Hibbert, the President, on the prize-winner, has taken some 70-year-old revision of the International System of Units correspondence between her late husband, (SI) to send the “Big K,” the reference kilo- the mathematician José Moyal (1910-1998), gram mass in Paris, to oblivion, or at least to and the Nobel Laureate Cambridge physicist, a museum, by defining the metre, kilogram, P. A. M. Dirac (1902-1984), which shows second, and ampere (etc.) using the so-called Dirac struggling with the radical approach fundamental physical constants. to quantum mechanics of the young, unpub- There are five submitted papers. and three lished mathematician/statistician, who had invited or contributed papers. The lead recently escaped to Britain from Paris. Dirac, author of the first of the submitted papers, in effect, delayed publication of Moyal’s first 139 Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales Marks — Editorial paper, later rewritten as two papers, and journal.2 (There are of course many stories of published with some support from Dirac, the single copy of a MS lost in a taxi, flood, who was not convinced by Moyal’s statistical or fire.) So soon we forget. So, unfortunately, approach to formalising quantum mechan- no copy exists of Moyal’s first paper, the one ics. In recent emails, Cosmas Zachos of the he disagreed with Dirac over. Argonne National Laboratory, commented The sixth submitted paper, by Robert that Dirac “believed that Poisson Brackets Young, is a reevaluation of the scientific would solve everything, and missed the legacy of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, founder of breathtaking innovation of Moyal brackets.” the Royal Society, whose contributions in Curtright and Zachos (2012) provide a more several fields have been forgotten. It is appro- formal summary of the development of the priate to publish this reappraisal now, 150 phase-space interpretation of quantum years after the founding of the Society. mechanics, including Moyal’s contribution. I admit to being excited by the invited Meanwhile, Dirac was not alone in his skep- papers. With the 2017 Four Academy ticism: Google Scholar shows that Moyal’s Forum exploring, inter alia, the undermin- 1949 paper, “Quantum mechanics as a ing of scientific expertise in these times of statistical theory,” now has 3210 citations, Trump, I thought it might be timely to see and rising, and very recently I received an what science (in this case, applied psychol- email confirming that Moyal’s phase space ogy) could tell us about those who deny the approach had anticipated Richard Feynman’s conclusions of climate science: the deniers. propagator approach by a decade or more.1 Last year I had come across The Debunking Reading Ann Moyal’s paper, I thought I Handbook (Cook and Lewandowsky, 2011). should try to obtain the original paper of I approached John Cook (now at George J. Moyal’s and publish it; Cosmas Zachos Mason University in Virginia) to write a would love to see it. But, apparently, Moyal review article for us, which appears below. did not bring a copy to Australia with him An advance copy was sent to all presenters in 1954; at any rate it is not amongst his at the 2017 Forum. surviving papers. What, I thought, about In May 2017, a new guidebook to Aus- Dirac’s collected papers, at Florida State Uni- tralian birds (Menkhorst et al. 2017) was versity? Inquires turned up nothing. Then I published; as a confirmed birder I bought read the complete letters, in Ann Moyal’s a copy and was struck by a chapter on the 2006 book. Dirac always promised to return evolution and relationships among Austral- the draft after reading it. Then it hit me: ian birds as revealed by recent DNA analy- with computers, photocopiers, printers, we sis. The chapter was rather lost in the guide- are overwhelmed by copies of papers. But book, I thought, and wrote to Leo Joseph, 70 years ago, if one had not made carbon its author, to seek permission to republish it copies of a draft when it was first typed up, there were only two ways of making further copies, short of retyping from scratch: pho- 2 My 1969 Master’s thesis, “Optimisation and plastic tography, or off-prints after publication in a analysis,” was typed on one of the first IBM Selectric typewriters in Melbourne, with carbon copies of the text, but I had to photograph the print-outs of the 1 Email from Basil Hiley, Professor Emeritus of Physics computer simulations to include them in the bound at London University, of 15 November 2017.