Marcus Oliphant
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Marcus Oliphant
Sir Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant, (8 October 1901 – 14 July 2000) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian who played an important role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and in the development of nuclear weapons. Born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, Oliphant graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1922. He was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship in 1927 on the strength of the research he had done on mercury, and went to England, where he studied under Sir Ernest Rutherford at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. There, he used a particle accelerator to fire heavy hydrogen nuclei (deuterons) at various targets. He discovered the respective nuclei of helium-3 (helions) and of tritium (tritons). He also discovered that when they reacted with each other, the particles that were released had far more energy than they started with. Energy had been liberated from inside the nucleus, and he realised that this was a resu ...
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Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The demonym ''Adelaidean'' is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The Traditional Owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna people. The area of the city centre and surrounding parklands is called ' in the Kaurna language. Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area extends from the coast to the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and stretches from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south. Named in honour of Queen Adelaide, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely-settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's foun ...
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Fellow Of The Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science". Fellow, Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955) and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki R ...
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History Of Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Building on scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and free France collaborated during World War II, in what was called the Manhattan Project, to build a fission weapon, also known as an atomic bomb. In August 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conducted by the United States against Japan at the close of that war, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in hostilities. The Soviet Union started development shortly after with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after, both countries were developing even more powerful fusion weapons known as hydrogen bombs. Britain and France built their own systems in the 1950s, and the list of states with nuclear weapons has gradually grown larger in the decades since. Physics and politics in the 1930s and 1940s In the first decades of t ...
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Humanitarian
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo-colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian. An informal ideology Humanitarianism is an informal ideology of practice; it is "the doctrine that people's duty is to promote human welfare." Humanitarianism is based on a view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such. Therefore, humanitarians work towards advan ...
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Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. Physicists work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments, and theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. Physicists can apply their knowledge towards solving practical problems or to developing new technologies (also known as applie ...
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Douglas Nicholls
Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls, (9 December 1906 – 4 June 1988) was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation. Nicholls was the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted when he was appointed Knight Bachelor in 1972 (he was subsequently appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1977). He was also the first — and to date the only — Indigenous Australian to be appointed to vice-regal office, serving as Governor of South Australia from 1 December 1976 until his resignation on 30 April 1977 due to poor health. Early life Nicholls was born on 9 December 1906 on the Cummeragunja Reserve in New South Wales.Richard Broome, Sir Douglas Ralph (Doug) (1906–1988)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, , published first in hardcopy 2012, acces ...
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James Harrison (Australian Governor)
Major General Sir James William Harrison (25 May 1912 – 16 September 1971) was an Australian Army officer and the first Australian-born Governor of South Australia. James Harrison was born at Camperdown, Victoria, the second child of Victorian-born parents James Samuel Harrison, farmer, and his wife Mary Eleanor, née Harlock. He was educated at Geelong College, Melbourne High School and the Royal Military College, Duntroon, where he graduated in 1932 as an artillery specialist. He had a varied military career including as the first Commandant of the Officer Cadet School, Portsea and culminating in becoming a member of the Military Board, as quartermaster-general (1962–63) and adjutant-general (1963–66), and General Officer Commanding (GOC) of Eastern Command, Sydney (from 1966). He was sworn in as Governor of South Australia on 4 December 1968. His term was unremarkable. Don Dunstan later concluded: 'Sir James fulfilled his role as Governor quietly and in the tradit ...
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Don Dunstan
Donald Allan Dunstan (21 September 1926 – 6 February 1999) was an Australian politician who served as the 35th premier of South Australia from 1967 to 1968, and again from 1970 to 1979. He was a member of the House of Assembly (MHA) for the division of Norwood from 1953 to 1979, and leader of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party from 1967 to 1979. Before becoming premier, Dunstan served as the 38th attorney-general of South Australia and the treasurer of South Australia. He is the fourth longest serving premier in South Australian history. In the late 1950s, Dunstan became well known for his campaign against the death penalty being imposed on Max Stuart,_who_was_convicted_of_rape_and_murder_of_a_small_girl,_opposing_then-Premier_Thomas_Playford_IV.html" ;"title="959 South Australian State Reports, SASR 144, Sup ..., who was convicted of rape and murder of a small girl, opposing then-Premier Thomas Playford IV">959 South Australian State Reports, SASR ...
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Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime, and was head of state of 15 realms at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, making the ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince ...
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Walter Crocker
Sir Walter Russell Crocker (25 March 190214 November 2002) was an Australian diplomat, writer and war veteran. Life and career Crocker was born in Broken Hill, New South Wales, the eldest son of Robert Crocker and Alma Bray. He served in World War II with the British Army, becoming a lieutenant colonel. He was ambassador or high commissioner to eleven countries, including India (twice), Indonesia, Canada, Italy, Belgium, Nepal, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Crocker was a Lieutenant- Governor of South Australia for more than nine years. He and his wife, Claire, had two sons, Robert and Christopher. Books Crocker authored a well-received biography of Jawaharlal Nehru titled '' Nehru: A Contemporary's Estimate'' (1966). Awards Crocker was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1955 while Australian Ambassador to Indonesia. He was later promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1977, in recognition of his service to t ...
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Mellis Napier
Sir Thomas John Mellis Napier (24 October 1882 – 22 March 1976) was an Australian judge and academic administrator. He was a judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia between 28 February 1924 and 28 February 1967, Chief Justice of South Australia from 25 February 1942 until 28 February 1967 and Chancellor of the University of Adelaide. Early life He was born in Dunbar in East Lothian to Dr. Alexander Disney Leith Napier FRSE and his wife Jessie Mellis. The family moved to London in 1887, where he attended the City of London School, and emigrated to Australia in 1896, Dr. Alexander Napier having taken the post of senior resident physician at the Adelaide Hospital. He studied law at the University of Adelaide graduating LLB in 1902. In 1903 he became Managing Clerk for "Kingston & McLachlan" and became a partner with McLachlan in 1906. Legal career In 1912 (together with Thomas Poole) he resuscitated the Law Society of South Australia, and served as its Vice President in ...
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ANZAAS Medal
The Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) is an organisation that was founded in 1888 as the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science to promote science. It was modelled on the British Association for the Advancement of Science. For many years, its annual meetings were a popular and influential way of promoting science in Australia and New Zealand. The current name has been used since 1930. History Two of its founders include Archibald Liversidge and Horatio George Anthony Wright. In the 1990s, membership and attendance at the annual meetings decreased as specialised scientific societies increased in popularity. Proposals to close the Association were discussed, but it continued after closing its office in Adelaide. It now operates on a smaller scale but is beginning to grow. The Annual Meetings are no longer held. It holds lectures, for the medals and for other named lectures, both nationally and at state level. Each ...
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