Royal Society of NSW Dinner and Awards Presentations
Friday, 7 March 2025
Strangers' Room, Parliament House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC
Thank you, Dr Pond[1].
Bujari Gamarruwa
Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura
In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of the land on which we gather, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging and to the Elders from all parts of our State, the Royal Society of New South Wales now a truly state-wide body with branches in the Southern Highlands, the Hunter, Western NSW, and New England.
At the outset I also need to offer a raft of thankyous: first to the Honourable Stephen Kamper, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Lands and Property, Minister for Multiculturalism, and Minister for Sport, for hosting us here at Parliament House; to Ross Griffith, chair of this year’s Dinner Committee; and to Selena Griffith, who is responsible for the beautiful table decorations tonight.[2]
Tonight is not the occasion for the history of the Royal Society, or at least the whole history of the Society, which is covered in Anne Coote’s book wonderful book Knowledge for a Nation. However, we know from Chapter 1 page 1 of her book that the impetus for the establishment of its first emanation came principally from the reaction of one its founders, Captain Francis Irvine, on his arrival in the Colony in either late 1820 or early 1821, when he wrote to his father “the country contains already a few men of cultivated and upright minds”.
It is that reference, and the title of the late Dr Tyler’s paper ‘Science for Gentlemen’[3] which has impelled me towards the short remarks I will make tonight.
In the early days of the Society, membership was restricted by gender and class. As Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon said during her speech at the launch of Dr Coote’s book[4], this was not unusual, reflecting the common 19th-century misapprehension “that a woman’s constitution could not bear the rigours of science and its pursuit.”[5]
The changing social landscape of the late 19th and early 20th century saw women wearing purple, white and green marching in the streets, organising petitions, claiming and achieving the right to vote and, in the case of Law, enrolling in the faculty whilst the Dean was away on extended leave… Great strategic thinking.
The Society was not immune to these changes and in 1935, membership to the Royal Society was opened to women[6] - a decade ahead the Royal Society in London[7], just as Australia was nearly two decades ahead in granting women the right to vote.
As then-President, Arthur Penfold, noted in his 1936 Address to the Society delivered to the newly minted mixed membership:
“Apparently there existed from the earliest days of the Society an indefinable barrier or atmosphere which clearly indicated women would not be welcome.”[8] As he went on to explain, as a “progressive society”, this was an attitude neither fitting nor tenable.
Ida Alison Brown—her surname spelt without an ‘e’—was amongst the first 11 women members.[9]
Dr Ida, as her students would later affectionately call her, had topped the State in the Leaving Certificate in Geology, going on to graduate from the University of Sydney in 1922 with First Class Honours, the University Medal for Geology-Minerology, and winning the Deas Thomson Scholarship, named after a former Vice-President of the Society.[10]
10 years later, she was awarded a doctorate for her thesis on the geology of the South Coast; in doing so, she became only the second woman to be awarded a doctorate in science by the University of Sydney.[11]
Although a specialist in petrology, Dr Brown met the all too familiar female hurdle of not being able to find work in her specialty area; although she was admitted as member of the Royal Society, she was not allowed, as a woman, underground,[12] where most petrology occurred.
She returned to academia and transitioned to palaeontology.[13]
In 1950 she married her colleague, geologist Dr William Rowan Browne—Brown this time spelt with an ‘e’[14]—who had been President of the Royal Society in 1932.[15] The announcement of the nuptials seems to have come as a surprise to friends and family; reputedly her father, when learning the news, spent the day in bed speechless.[16]
Although she would retire from lecturing that same year, her research efforts would continue, mostly in collaboration with her new husband.
In 1953, she was elected as the Royal Society’s first woman President.[17]
On her death in 1977, the late[18] Dr David Branagan wrote, “[Dr Brown] belongs to an interesting period of the development of Australian science during which a number of dedicated women quietly but firmly established themselves in fields which had been largely dominated by men.”[19]
It is fitting, then, that the Royal Society’s Early Career Medal, established in 2023 and presented tonight, is named in her honour.
Apart from hearing from another female leader in her chosen discipline tonight, the suite of Awards of which the Ida Browne Medal is one is what we are here to celebrate. It is a tradition of recognition and encouragement of “studies and investigations in Science, Art, Literature and Philosophy”, in line with the Royal Society’s raison d’être as outlined in its incorporating Act of 1881.[20]
The broad and inclusive sweep of that remit is reflected in the evolving form of the Awards.
Today, the Career Excellence Awards include, in addition to the Ida Browne Medal, the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Scholars Medal, also introduced in 2023.
To the three-year rotating groups of Discipline Awards have been added the Social and Behavioural Sciences Award, first presented last year and the Humanities, Philosophy and Law and the Milner Interdisciplinary Award, inaugurated this year. Awards for Creative and Performing Arts Award and for Life Sciences will be presented for the first time next year.
I framed my remarks this evening in terms of women and the Royal Society not just because it is International Women’s Day tomorrow, nor to illustrate the commendable reflection of contemporary issues for which the Royal Society is famed, but in order to mention two outstanding women.
The first I have already alluded to, is our after-dinner speaker, Dr Georgina Long.
In 2020, I had the privilege of presenting Dr Long with the insignia of Officer in the Order of Australia. Last year, she shared the Australian of the Year Award with her colleague Professor Richard Scolyer—whom we are all, I’m sure, thinking of at the moment.
The second outstanding woman is the person who will be introducing Dr Long… the inimitable and indefatigable Dr Susan Pond.
Dr Pond will be finishing up as President next month and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank her for all her incredible efforts during her term.
Susan, your Presidency has not only seen the reconfiguration of the these Awards I just mentioned, but also important expansions of the Society’s efforts.
For instance, in your own words, “taking the New South Wales in [the Society’s] […] name seriously”, including the opening of the New England North West Branch last year[21], which expands the Society’s regional footprint even further.
Then, there is your involvement with Ideas@theHouse program, which is, in many senses, a microcosm of the Society’s fundamental aims, of providing a hub for the dissemination, the exchange, and the connection of ideas, across every age, across every background.
I think a round of applause is more than warranted.
[applause]
To the ten recipients of tonight’s Awards—and I add, with a wink, there are 6 women; the mathematicians can resolve the rest of the equation:
The immense honour of being invited to be part of these Awards is perhaps surpassed only by the excitement and pride elicited in hearing about, and celebrating, your extraordinary achievements, across the gamut of disciplines and fields of enquiry, practice, and application. You enrich the lives of our community, our collective understanding, and our appreciation of the world we live in.
Congratulations.
[1] Dr Susan Pond, President, Royal Society of NSW.
[2] Information provided by Dr Susan Pond.
[3] Tyler, ‘Science for Gentlemen’, op. cit., available here
[4] Dr Anne Coote, Knowledge for a Nation. Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Royal Society of NSW, 2024.
[5] Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon, ‘Book Launch: Knowledge for a Nation. Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales by Dr Anne Coote’, Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol.157, part 2, 2024, available here, p.193
[6] Dr Susan Pond, ‘Presidential address at the Gala Dinner’, Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol.155, part 2, 2022, available here, p.141.
[7] Membership to the Royal Society in London was opened to women in 1945: Dr Stella Butler, ‘Pioneering Women’, Royal Society website, 8 March 2023, available here
[8] A R Penfold, ‘Presidential Address’, 6 May 1936, in Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol.155, part 2, 2022, vol.70, part 1, 1937, available here, p.1
[9] Dr Pond, ‘Presidential address at the Gala Dinner’, op. cit., p.
[10] ibid. The Deas Thomson Scholarship was established in 1854 at the behest of Sir Edward Deas Thomson: : ‘Deas Thomson Scholarships (Geology and Minerology)’, University of Sydney website, available here. Technically, he was Senior Vice President of the Royal Societies precursor associations, the Australian (Philosophical) Society 1850-55 and the Philosophical Society of New South Wales 1861-65: ‘List of Presidents’, Royal Society of NSW website, available here
[11] Full title: The Geology of the South Coast of New South Wales with Special Reference to the Origin and Relationships of the Igneous Rocks: ‘Dr Ida Alison Brown’, Sydney Mail, 8 June 1932, p.21, available here
[12] Claire Hooker, ‘Stratigraphy: Dr Ida Alison Browne 1900-1976’, Australasian Science, June 2001, p.46, available here
[13] Branagan, ‘Obituaries: Ida Alison Browne’, op. cit. p.75
[14] On the addition of an ‘e’ at the end of her name the marriage entailed, a colleague commented at the time, jocularly, “Hearty congratulations on your most laudable effort to standardise spelling, which I hope will soon be achieved”: Claire Hooker, ‘Stratigraphy: Dr Ida Alison Browne 1900-1976’, Australasian Science, June 2001, p.46, available here
[15] In 1932: ‘List of Presidents’, Royal Society of NSW website, available here.
[16] Hooker, ‘Stratigraphy: Dr Ida Alison Browne 1900-1976’, Australasian Science, June 2001, p.46, available here
[17] ‘List of Presidents’, Royal Society of NSW website, available here.
[18] ‘Vale Dr David Branagan AM FRSN’, Royal Society of NSW website, 15 January 2022, available here
[19] Branagan, ‘Obituaries: Ida Alison Browne’, op. cit., p.76.
[20] Royal Society of NSW Incorporation Act (Private Act) of 1881, available here
[21] The Council of the Royal Society of New South Wales confirmed the establishment of the New England North West Branch (NENW) of the Society at its August 2024 meeting: ‘New England North West’, Royal Society of NSW website, available here