Current Issue
Historical Records of Australian Science
Volume 35 Number 1 2024
HR24002 Full Text | HR24002PDF (561 KB) Open Access Article
Insects are a major component of Australia’s biodiversity. The early discovery and description of this fauna was largely contributed by talented entomologists. From the late 1880s, Broken Hill pharmacist Oswald Bertram Lower revealed the extraordinary moth fauna of the mallee and arid zone especially. A summary and context for his pioneering work is now available here. The ecological restoration of these habitats will increasingly draw on Lower’s historical collection and insights.
HR22015 Abstract | HR22015 Full Text | HR22015PDF (2.9 MB) | HR22015Supplementary Material (845 KB) Open Access Article
Professor William (Bill) Budd, the first glaciology program leader of the Australian Antarctic Division, was a founding figure in Australian glaciological research. Bill worked on an enormous range of glaciological and climate problems. He developed numerical models to simulate the interactive response of Antarctica to global warming and the waxing and waning of ice ages. He introduced many new studies and technologies and much of what he initiated more than fifty years ago remains core to the present Australian Antarctic program. Photograph credit: Australian Academy of Science.
HR23019 Abstract | HR23019 Full Text | HR23019PDF (3.5 MB) | HR23019Corrigendum (780 KB) | HR23019Supplementary Material (1.6 MB) Open Access Article
Ian McDougall was an internationally renowned Earth scientist who spent most of his academic career at the Australian National University. This memoir outlines his research achievements in the fields of K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology, from his pioneering work on young volcanics that supported the emerging theory of plate tectonics, to the establishment of a comprehensive geochronological framework for hominin evolution in eastern Africa. Photograph by Warren Hudson, ANU Photographic Services.
HR23016 Abstract | HR23016 Full Text | HR23016PDF (3.4 MB) Open Access Article
Ray Martin (1926–2020) was an accomplished academic and leader whose remarkable contributions and discoveries earned him numerous awards and accolades. One of natures gentlemen, he found joy in sports, the arts, and creative pursuits. With a passion for science, he navigated an adventurous career path from academia to industry, management and leadership, including advising the Australian Federal Government, all while forming deep friendships and leaving a lasting legacy as an outstanding teacher and mentor—a quiet achiever.
HR23021 Abstract | HR23021 Full Text | HR23021PDF (3.1 MB) | HR23021Supplementary Material (408 KB) Open Access Article
Metallurgist Rupert Horace Myers (1921–2019) was awarded Australia’s first ‘science’ PhD degree in 1948. After working at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell in the United Kingdom, he made his career at the University of New South Wales, where he was vice-chancellor from 1969 to 1981. Knighted in 1981, he was a model of scientific and academic leadership in Australia. Photograph provided by the Australian Academy of Science (photographer unknown).
HR23023 Abstract | HR23023 Full Text | HR23023PDF (1 MB) | HR23023Supplementary Material (213 KB) Open Access Article
HR23026Bibliography of the history of Australian science, no. 44, 2022/23
Online Early
The peer-reviewed and edited version of record published online before inclusion in an issue
Gerry Wake spent almost all his working life at the University of Sydney; beginning undergraduate studies in 1951, through an MSc and PhD in 1958 and returned after two years overseas to a Lectureship in the Biochemistry Department. His research flourished with notable discoveries being the mechanism of stabilisation of casein micelles, the circular nature of the Bacillus subtilis chromosome and bidirectionality of its replication. A professor from 1977 to 1999, he influenced a generation of biochemists with many former research students having remarkable scientific careers. Wake family photograph.
HR23030 Abstract | HR23030 Full Text | HR23030PDF (2.4 MB) | HR23030Supplementary Material (620 KB) Open Access Article
HR23022The contributions of Rupert Best to the modern concept of the nature of viruses
Rupert Jethro Best, working alone in Adelaide at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute, was among the first to purify tobacco mosaic virus and to provide evidence that it was a heterogeneous macromolecule, composed mainly of protein but also small prosthetic groups with the properties of a weak acid, wherein lay the activity of the virus. This paper describes the contributions of Rupert Best to early theories on the material nature and mode of reproduction of viruses. Photographer unknown, State Library of South Australia.
HR23022 Abstract | HR23022 Full Text | HR23022PDF (1.6 MB) | HR23022Supplementary Material (544 KB) Open Access Article
HR23020‘From Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s side’: a virus, a beetle, and a PhD
A chance discovery in alpine Australia in 1980 led to the discovery of a virus in a remote and rare species of plant. The virus has clear connections with a virus in the Northern Hemisphere. The way we study plant virology has changed over the intervening years but the mystery as to how the virus got there remains. Photograph by: PL Guy 2004.
HR23020 Abstract | HR23020 Full Text | HR23020PDF (1.2 MB) Open Access Article
Within the first forty years of English colonisation of Australia, the climate of Queensland proved to be the ideal place for the commercial production of bananas. It was in the south-eastern corner of the state that a new disease of banana (now called Fusarium Wilt) was identified by a Brisbane physician, Dr. Joseph Bancroft, in the early 1870s. The disease was given the name ‘Panama disease’, despite the fact that it was not discovered in Panama until twenty years later. Photograph by Andre Drenth.
HR23012 Abstract | HR23012 Full Text | HR23012PDF (1.9 MB) Open Access Article
HR23027G. P. Darnell-Smith and the introduction of copper carbonate ‘dry pickling’ of wheat seed
Darnell-Smith developed a dry treatment for controlling the hitherto severe wheat disease common bunt. His groundbreaking work was done during the First World War in field experiments at Wagga Wagga and Cowra and widely reported in Australian newspapers. The treatment with copper carbonate dust was highly effective and simpler to apply than the previously used ‘wet pickles’. Despite this, uptake by farmers was slow until popularised in America so that by 1930 bunt had become a rarely seen disease. Photograph of painting by Dr Jordan Bailey.
HR23027 Abstract | HR23027 Full Text | HR23027PDF (1 MB) Open Access Article
HR23019_COCorrigendum to: William (Bill) Francis Budd 1938–2022
HR23019_CO Full Text | HR23019_COPDF (780 KB) Open Access Article
The wattles (Acacia species) are an ancient and iconic Australian genus of trees and shrubs which form part of the identity of the nation. Galls were a common feature on wattle trees, initially being attributed to the activity of some insects, but later a genus of rust fungi, Uromycladium, was found to also cause galls. The lives of two of the early collectors of wattle rust galls, Otto Tepper and Charles Brittlebank, are also illuminated in this paper. Photograph by Alastair McTaggart.
HR23006 Abstract | HR23006 Full Text | HR23006PDF (1.9 MB) Open Access Article
HR23007Henry Tryon—the true discoverer of the potato brown rot pathogen, Ralstonia solanacearum
In 1894, the Queensland government entomologist, and later vegetable pathologist, Henry Tryon (1856–1943) discovered a new disease that caused potato tubers to become rotted and putrid. He consistently found bacterial cells in a thick mucilaginous gum in the vascular tissues of wilted stems and infected tubers, and gave it the name Bacillus vascularum solani. The American bacteriologist Erwin Frink Smith would not accept Tryon’s discovery, instead naming the causal agent Pseudomonas solanacearum. That bacterium, now called Ralstonia solanacearum is a significant plant pathogen worldwide. Photograph by an unknown person.
HR23007 Abstract | HR23007 Full Text | HR23007PDF (1.3 MB) Open Access Article
HR23010Common leaf spot of lucerne and the dawn of mycology and plant pathology in Australia
Among the fungi recorded in a paper published in the 1880 Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales was Sphaerella destructiva, now Pseudopeziza medicaginis, the cause of common leaf spot of lucerne. The paper, co-authored by the naturalist Reverend Julian Tenison-Woods and the Queensland Government Botanist Frederick Manson Bailey was the first known comprehensive list of Australian fungi published by Australian residents. It is a milestone in the evolution of mycology and plant pathology studies in Australia. Photograph by H. H. Baily.
HR23010 Abstract | HR23010 Full Text | HR23010PDF (1.7 MB) Open Access Article
HR23008A prickly business—Edward Shelton, Henry Tryon and the mysterious pineapple disease
In the early 1890s a serious mystery disease appeared in pineapple plantations around Brisbane, Queensland. The American-born Professor Edward Shelton, Queensland’s first instructor in agriculture, Henry Tryon, assistant curator at the Queensland Museum, and others inspected diseased plants and concluded that the disease was caused by a fungus, later identified as the oomycete Phytophthora cinnamomi. Shelton went on to become the first principal of the Gatton Agricultural College, but was forced to resign after severely disciplining some of the students. Photograph by an unknown person.
HR23008 Abstract | HR23008 Full Text | HR23008PDF (1.4 MB) | HR23008Supplementary Material (499 KB) Open Access Article
At the start of the decade of 1890, sugarcane growers in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales began to notice a serious disease affecting their crops. American-born Nathan Cobb, who was the New South Wales Government Vegetable Pathologist, discovered that a bacterium, now known as Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. vasculorum, was the cause of the disease. Although others were not convinced that Cobb had conclusively proved that the bacterium was the causal agent, it was for many years known as ‘Cobb’s gumming disease of cane’.
HR23011 Abstract | HR23011 Full Text | HR23011PDF (1.5 MB) Open Access Article
HR23005Stem rust of wheat in colonial Australia and the development of the plant pathology profession
Grain production in the early years of colonisation in Australia was hampered by poor farming practices, lack of livestock, and belligerent, unenthusiastic convict labour. In 1803, just when the situation began to improve, stem rust of wheat was discovered by the exiled Irish rebel ‘General’ Joseph Holt on Brush Farm, owned by Captain William Cox. The disease, which has remained a threat to wheat production ever since, found its way into ironic Australian literature, including Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter. Photograph from an original picture in the possession of Sir William Bentham painted in 1798, Day & Haghe lithrs. to the Queen, Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/22823177. Accessed August 2021.
HR23005 Abstract | HR23005 Full Text | HR23005PDF (1.9 MB) | HR23005Supplementary Material (626 KB) Open Access Article
Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) is one of the most economically important viruses in the world. Before it became a global problem, it devastated tomato crops in Australia. This paper describes how TSWV was identified and biologically characterised by Australian scientists at a time when few techniques existed to detect the virus. It is a remarkable story of human endeavour by a small team of people working in academic isolation.
HR23015 Abstract | HR23015 Full Text | HR23015PDF (4.2 MB) | HR23015Corrigendum (4.3 MB) Open Access Article
Just Accepted
These articles have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. They are still in production and have not been edited, so may differ from the final published form.
Anthony George Klein 1935-2021
A matter of where and when—the discovery of late blight of potato in Australia
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The discovery of tomato spotted wilt virus
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
Wattle gall—the quintessential Australian plant disease
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
Stem rust of wheat in colonial Australia and the development of the plant pathology profession
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
Oswald Bertram Lower (1864–1925): a South Australian pioneer in the discovery of Australia’s biodiversity
Historical Records of Australian Science 35 (1) -
Bibliography of the history of Australian science, no. 44, 2022/23
Historical Records of Australian Science 35 (1)Compiled by Helen M. Cohn -
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The discovery of gumming disease of sugarcane in Australia
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
Henry Tryon—the true discoverer of the potato brown rot pathogen, Ralstonia solanacearum
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
Common leaf spot of lucerne and the dawn of mycology and plant pathology in Australia
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
John Staer (1850–1933): the patronym behind Eucalyptus staeri, the Albany Blackbutt
Historical Records of Australian Science 34 (2) -
Joseph Bancroft’s discovery of Fusarium Wilt of banana
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
G. P. Darnell-Smith and the introduction of copper carbonate ‘dry pickling’ of wheat seed
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
‘From Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s side’: a virus, a beetle, and a PhD
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
A prickly business—Edward Shelton, Henry Tryon and the mysterious pineapple disease
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early) -
The contributions of Rupert Best to the modern concept of the nature of viruses
Historical Records of Australian Science (Online Early)