CSIRO PUBLISHING | Historical Records of Australian Science

This Historical Records of Australian Science virtual issue has been curated in support of the 2023 conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, affectionately known as AAHPSSS. Dating back to 1966, AAHPSSS is one of the oldest academic associations in Australia.

First up in this issue is an article by Libby Robin, based on her Dyason Lecture from 2021. This lecture is AAHPSSS’ signature annual event, named in honour of Diana ‘Ding’ Dyason, foundation President of the society.

The 2023 conference was hosted by the University of Sydney, one of Australia’s leading History and Philosophy of Science departments. Daniela Helbig and Maureen O’Malley’s article delves into the history of our discipline at this institution.

Nuclear concerns have been the subject of much conversation at recent AAHPSSS conferences, including at the 2023 meeting. Darren Holden’s article on the history of the USA’s nuclear weapons program touches on these issues, including Australian involvement and ideals of transparency.

The issue of this scientific ideal of openness – important for the metaresearchers at AAHPSSS – is also central to Terry Kass’ account of Robert Hamilton Mathews.

There is much recent interest in the flows of colonial science especially between India and Australia. Sara Maroske’s article is an important contribution to this literature.

My own article – originally presented at the 2019 AAHPSSS conference – touches on issues of the constitutional arrangement of Australian science that remain relevant today.

Dr. Martin Bush

Senior Research Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies

Last Updated: 20 Nov 2023

HR21014Soil in the air

Libby Robin

pp. 110-121

Originally presented on 25 November 2021 at the University of Melbourne as a keynote of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science. The lecture explores the history of interdisciplinary knowledge and integrated science, by pairing the post-war stories of history and philosophy of science (HPS) (the traditional focus of the Dyason Lecture) with a history of soil conservation as an integrating environmental science, in Australia and globally, from the war years until the Anthropocene.

HR17023The Indiscretion of Mark Oliphant: How an Australian Kick-started the American Atomic Bomb Project

Darren Holden

pp. 28-35

HR22005‘The border problems of science and philosophy’: Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider and post-World War 2 science in Australian academia and society

Daniela K. Helbig and Maureen A. O’Malley

pp. 147-159

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider (1891–1990), a refugee immigrant to Australia in 1938, was a student of Nobel Prize-winning physicists, Einstein, Planck, and von Laue. She combined a background in physics with a philosophical focus. Her intellectual life was spent in the borderlands between science and philosophy, but also science and society, as she engaged in public outreach with considerable success in the regional towns of NSW. Credit: Wayne State University Press (out of copyright).

HR09026The Personality of Environmental Prediction: Griffith Taylor as 'Latter-day Prophet'

Carolyn Strange

pp. 133-148

HR20016False testimony: the surveying career of Robert Hamilton Mathews

Terry Kass

pp. 168-178

The ethnographic recordings of Robert Hamilton Mathews have gained increasing respect over recent decades, and it has been assumed that their quality was connected to his early career as a property surveyor. Research into this career, however, reveals a man maximising his income using illegal and unethical methods so that it becomes necessary to reconsider the influence of Mathews’ survey work on his ethnography.

HR12013Australian and Indian Plants: Making Connexions in Nineteenth-Century Botany

Sara Maroske

pp. 107-119

HR21007Mary Proctor and the Cawthron observatory project: a lost history of the Mount Stromlo Observatory

Martin Bush

pp. 12-22

The foundation of the Mt Stromlo Solar Observatory is celebrated as a major achievement in the history of Australian science, but for many years there was uncertainty about its construction. Between 1912 and 1914 the Anglo-American popularizer of astronomy, Mary Proctor, undertook a tour of Australia and New Zealand, which nearly resulted in an observatory being built at Nelson, New Zealand. The lack of historical attention to Proctor’s tour, and the plans for Nelson, speak to the way in which we tend to remember success over failure, to overlook the role of popularization in science, and to forget the contribution of women.