Australian Institute of Physics		South Australian Branch
Notice of a FREE PUBLIC LECTURE and of the presentation of the BRONZE BRAGG MEDAL and CERTIFICATES
7:30 pm, TUESDAY 13th. MAY 1997
in the FLENTJE Lecture Theatre, Plaza Building of the University of Adelaide (go down the steps at the northeast corner of Hughes Plaza or enter from the Horace Lamb building)

The Bronze Bragg Medal is named after Sir William Henry Bragg (Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Physics at the University of Adelaide from 1886 until 1909) and Sir William Lawrence Bragg, who shared the Nobel prize in Physics in 1915. The medal is awarded for highest achievement in the year-12 Physics examination. Certificates of merit are awarded to all students who attain full marks in that examination.

The presentation will be followed by a public lecture:

This talk, intended for the general public, will describe the birth, life and death of some of the most exciting stars in our Universe. Dr Bailes will introduce a pair of stars formed in the early Universe, and follow their subsequent evolution until the present day. Throughout this journey, Dr Bailes will draw on the latest pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, and explain how Australian scientists and their international collaborators have used the giant 64 metre radio telescope at Parkes in New South Wales to discover some of the most dramatic examples of neutron star binaries known. The accuracy with which these systems can be measured is providing astronomers with some startling information about the Nature of the Universe. Dr Bailes is a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow at the University of Melbourne Physics Department, and he is an honorary fellow of the Australia Telescope National Facility. His research interests revolve around radio pulsars and he is involved in the timing of most interesting Southern pulsars and dabbles in theories of their origin and evolution. He graduated from the Adelaide Physics dept. and went to Mt Stromlo and Siding Springs observatories at the ANU to do a PhD on the origin of pulsar velocities under the supervision of Dr Manchester from the CSIRO. (The thesis was awarded the Crawford Medal for excellence in a PhD.) In 1989 he went to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and subsequently worked at the University of Manchester (Jodrell Bank). He returned to Australia in 1993 and spent the first three years at the Australia Telescope National Facility before moving to the University of Melbourne in 1996. (In 1993 he was awarded the CSIRO medal as part of the pulsar team for the discovery of a large number of millisecond pulsars.) He has been involved in the discovery of approximately half of the known binary and millisecond pulsars and is currently striving to achieve the highest possible accuracy in the field of pulsar timing, to enable tests of General Relativity and precision mapping of astrophysical systems.

PUBLIC LECTURE Please help publicise the public lecture by Dr Matthew Bailes on Tuesday May 13th by displaying the notice above. Members are invited to have dinner with the speaker and Bragg Medal and certificate recipients at 6pm on the evening of the lecture in the Equinox restaurant, Union building, at the University of Adelaide. Please make a booking with the AIP secretary, or with Ms Tanya Weir on 8303 5996, by noon on Tuesday May 13th.

STUDENT NIGHT (advance notice) In this annual event, a postgraduate Physics student from each South Australian university will talk about their research work. Also the Silver Bragg Medals for highest achievement in the final undergraduate year at each department will be presented, as well as Claire Corani prizes which could not be presented at the AGM. This will be held at 7:30 pm on Tuesday June 3rd 1997 in the Kerr Grant Lecture Theatre in the Physics Building of the University of Adelaide.