Special Congress Events

The Massey Medal was proposed at the AIP Congress in 1988 and established in 1990 as a gift of the Institute of Physics, UK, to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the AIP in 1963 as a separate institution (previously physicists in Australia had belonged to the Australian Branch of the IOP).

The prize is awarded every two years for contributions to physics or its applications made by an Australian physicist working anywhere in the world, or by a non Australian resident in, and for work carried out in, Australia. A lecture on the work for which the Medal is awarded is presented at Congress in the year of the award, and an article published in The Physicist. The recipient must be a member of the Australian Institute of Physics or of the Institute of Physics. Previous winners have been:

1990 Professor R Dalitz

1992 Professor D H Briggs

1994 Professor R Baxter, ANU

1995 Professor A D Buckingham, University of Cambridge

1996 Professor A Snyder, ANU

1997 Professor D Pegge, Griffith University

1998 Professor D Melrose, University of Sydney

The Massey Award will be presented by IOP President, Professor Sir Gareth Roberts FRS CEng CPhys FInstP, followed by a lecture by the award recipient.

All delegates are welcome to attend.

The Women in Physics group will hold a forum in the North/South Dining Room, located on level 4 of the Adelaide University Union Building. For further details please contact Dr Judith Pollard on +61 8 8303 5316 or judith.pollard@adelaide.edu.au, or after 14 November Margaret Law on +61 8 8300 4464 or margaret.law@tenix.com

Time travel has made great science fiction since H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895. But can it really be done? Physicists have long known that travel into the future is possible, but travel into the past is far more problematic. What happens, for example, to the time traveller who goes back and murders his mother as a young girl? However, recent research on wormholes in space have led to renewed speculation that visiting the past may be possible. Ways to avoid the inevitable paradoxes have been suggested, involving the existence of parallel universes.

This public lecture featuring Paul Davies, open to all delegates and the gereral public will be held in Bonython Hall (L11).

Paul Davies was born in London in 1946, obtained a doctorate from University College London in 1970, and held academic appointments at Cambridge and London Universities until, at the age of 34, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He remained there until his emigration to Australia in 1990 to take the Chair of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide. In May 1993 the University created a new position, Porfessor of Natural Philosophy, specially for him.

In May 1997 he decided to take early retirement from the University. He currently holds Visiting Professor positions at Imperial College, London, and at the University of Queensland.

Paul Davies has published over 100 research papers in specialist journals, in the fields of cosmology, gravitation and quantum field theory, with particular emphasis on black holes and the origin of the universe. He is also interested in the nature of time, high energy particle physics, the foundations of quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the theory of complex systems. His former colleagues at the the University of Adelaide are investigating topics in quantum gravity including superstrings, higher-dimensional black holes and quantum cosmology.

Paul Davies is well known as an author, broadcaster and public lecturer.

Those delegates wishing to attend can do so at no charge but will need to inform the Congress organisers that they wish to attend.                  

Members of the public may now purchase tickets through BASS (on 131 246 or at www.bass.sa.com.au). Tickets are $12 for adults and $6 for students.                  

The Bragg Gold Medal for the best PhD thesis by a student from an Australian University was established in 1992 as an initiative of the South Australian Branch, to commemorate Sir Laurence Bragg and his father Sir William Bragg.

The winners so far have been:

1992 Dr Stephen Bass, University of Adelaide

1993 Dr Henry Chapman, University of Melbourne

1994 Dr Wolodymyr Melnitchouk, University of Adelaide

1995 Dr Howard Wiseman, University of Queensland

1996 Dr Andre Luiten, University of Western Australia

1997 Dr Alexander Buryak, Australian National University

1998 Dr Tanya Munro, University of Sydney

1999 Dr Ping Koy Lam, Australian National University

The medal is awarded annually to the student who is judged to have completed the most outstanding PhD thesis in Physics under the auspices of an Australian University, whose degree has been approved but not necessarily conferred in the previous thirteen months. No candidate can be nominated more than once.

The Bragg Award will be presented by AIP President, Prof John Pilbrow, followed by a lecture by the award recipient.

All delegates are welcome to attend.

Meet Professor Douglas C Giancoli, author of Physics for Scientists and Engineers and Physics: Principles & Applications at the Pearson Education Australia wine and cheese evening on Tuesday at 5.30pm.

This is Doug Giancoli's first visit to Australia. He is interested to hear about teaching trends in university physics in Australia and to meet physics academics. This is a rare opportunity to meet a world-renowned physics textbook author.

Pearson Education Australia is the world's leading publisher of educational products for the academic market. Previously known as Prentice Hall and Addison Wesley Longman, our products help teachers teach and people learn. From textbooks and teacher guides to computer based and on-line programs, we help people realise the power of education.