Page 8 - Journal 2018B FINAL

Sir Mark Oliphant and Education
Monica Oliphant, AO
Monica Oliphant is Patron of the annual Oliphant Science Awards. She has had a distinguished career as an energy research scientist and consultant specialising in residential renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Iam very proud to be associated with the Oliphant Science Awards, established in the name of my father in law, Sir Mark Oliphant.
It is SA’s largest Science Competition for school students, and I believe, it is one of the largest of its type in Australia. I know Sir Mark would have also been extremely pleased with how much participation has grown since the competition’s start in 1981 and in the increase in competition topics and high calibre work. Sir Mark had a keen interest in education and that is something I would like to take up with you here.
Just recently my daughter said to me in a beseeching tone – “please clear out some of your papers and mess before you die!” That was very salutary advice that I was not upset to receive as I have a lot of rubbish papers
but several useful ones as well that would be good to carefully file and hand on. So, I started to make a very small attempt at declutter and came across an article on Education written by Sir Mark in August 1962 almost 60 years ago that I thought I would pass it on.
Before I do so, I will point out some of the things that probably helped shaped his life
and views. Sir Mark was born in 1901 - still
the Victorian era. His father was a very gentle and religious man, a theosophist, who worked as a clerical officer in what is now SA Water and his mother, a very practical primary school teacher. As the eldest of 5 boys he was used to taking charge. At the time of his birth gas lights lit the streets of Adelaide and electricity had not yet reached the suburbs. It did in 1904 when the coal fired power station at the top
of Grenfell Street (next to where Tandanya is now) started operation.
It is well known how Sir Mark won a scholarship to work with Lord Rutherford in Cambridge in 1927, later becoming Professor
of Physics at Birmingham University and then working on the Manhattan project that culminated in the dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan. This led to the end of WW2 but left many scientists guilt laden in the knowledge of the destructive force their research had unleashed. About 20 years after he had left for England, Sir Mark returned to Australia.
The world had entered the Atomic era with hopes of a future electricity supply “too cheap to meter”. He was invited to establish the Research School of Physical Sciences in the brand-new research university, the Australian National University. It was in his capacity as Director of the Research School of Physical Sciences that in 1962 he came to Adelaide
to give 3 lectures in the St Mark’s Lunch Hour Lecture Series. The third, given on the 2nd August was on “The Transformation of Education”.
Again I digress a little to put in context what was happening at that time since I believe that much of the talk – and I am only giving the introduction and conclusion – was ahead of its time in educational thought considering the status of technology and some of it is influenced his family upbringing.
In 1962 the population of Australia was 10.7M, less than half of what it is now. Menzies
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