In Synch

Deakin University researcher Kathryn Keeble has played a key role in Sir Mark Oliphant being honoured at the Australian Synchrotron.

Kathryn is completing a new biography on Sir Mark, and an exegesis which she hopes to submit early in 2014.

Sir Mark was an Australian physicist and humanitarian.

“My first association with the Australian Synchrotron came around five or six year ago," she said.

"That was when I contacted them to alert them to the omission of Mark Oliphant from a paper that they had a link to on their website - 'History of synchrotrons'.

“Dr Mark Boland, the Principal Accelerator Physicist, got in touch with me and I gave him a copy of Oliphant's original 1943 proposal for a synchrotron accelerator and we've kept in touch.

“A couple of years later I was lucky enough to be offered a Deakin HDR scholarship which has allowed me to undertake this biography.

“In the meantime Mark Boland and his colleague Greg LeBlanc, who is the Head of Accelerator Science and Operations, had been lobbying to have the new auditorium at the Australian Synchrotron named after Sir Mark.

“I was thrilled to be invited along to the opening.

“It was a lovely day and I was very honoured to be there and to represent Deakin.

“Dr Monica Oliphant, who is Sir Mark’s daughter-in-law, Professor Suzanne Cory, the President of the Australian Academy of Science and I were given a tour of the Synchrotron in between the ceremony and the official dinner that followed.

“Professor Cory promised to launch my book at the Academy in Canberra which was also a wonderful thrill for me.”