False start for the PhD in Australia

Historical Records of Australian Science

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 129-141

  Rae, Ian D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 52649105546     PISSN: 07273061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1071/hr02009     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Ian D. Rae, 'They had to go: Australian chemists who took Doctor of Philosophy degree in Britain, 1945-65', Historical Records of Australian Science, 12(3) (1999), 331-361;
2. Andrea Dale, Wrestling With a Fine Woman: The History of Postgraduate Education in Australia, 1851-1993 (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1997).
3. Y. Gingras, Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada, trans. P. Keating (Montreal/Kingston, 1991), pp. 38-39;
4. See also A. B. McKillop, Matters of Mind. The University in Ontario, 1791-1951, (Toronto, 1994), pp. 154-159 and pp. 342-347.
5. Other Canadian universities were slow to follow McGill and Toronto, with these two being the only ones to offer the PhD degree until the mid-1950s: (K. Ingold, 'Reflections on decisions made -an address by the Gold Medallist in Science and Engineering', Canadian Chemical News, 50(7) (1998), 20-21.
6. H. Parton, The University of New Zealand, (Dunedin, 1979), pp. 185-186.
7. The degree was dropped in 1926 after what was described as 'uneven standards' (J. C. Beaglehole, The University of New Zealand, (Auckland, 1937) pp. 278-279) but reintroduced in 1945 and continued in the separate universities that replaced the national institution.
8. J. G. Garbers (ed.), A Survey of the Training and Employment of Scientists and Engineers in South Africa Part Three. Graduation Trends in South African Universities, (Pretoria, ca 1963). The survey was conducted for the National Bureau of Educational and Social Research.
9. Renate Simpson, How The PhD came to Britain. A Century of Struggle for Post-graduate Education (Guildford, Surrey, 1983).
10. A more American view is presented in A. L. Buchanan and J-P. V M. Herubel, The Doctor of Philosophy Degree. A Selective, Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut, 1995).
11. Ernest Rutherford, remarks in A. Hill (ed.), Report of Proceedings, Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 6 (London, 1912), pp. 68-69.
12. H. B. Allen, in A. Hill (ed.), Report of Proceedings, Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 6 (London, 1912), pp. 54-56.
13. J. W. Barrett, in A. Hill (ed.), Report of Proceedings, Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 6 (London, 1912), pp. 67-68.
14. W. Peterson, in A. Hill (ed.), Report of Proceedings, Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 6 (London, 1912), pp. 69-70.
15. F. Hoyle, Home is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (Mill Valley, California, 1994).
16. L. Dale, The English Men. Professing Literature in Australian Universities (Toowoomba, Queensland, 1997), pp. 94-95.
17. Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928) was a lawyer, politician and philosopher who was created a viscount in 1911.
18. R. B. Haldane, 'Great Britain and Germany - A study in education' (address delivered in October 1901 at Liverpool), in Education and Empire. Addresses on Certain Topics of the Day (London, 1902), pp. 1-38;
19. R. B. Haldane, 'The executive brain of the British Empire', a pamphlet cited in Nature, 72 (1905), 185.
20. A. Hill (ed.), Third Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 1926, (London, 1926), pp. 203-230.
21. They were G. H. Briggs (1893-1987), later prominent in Australian physics, being Chief of the Division of Physics of the CSIR, and J. G. Wood (1900-1959), later Professor of Botany in the University of Adelaide. Both had PhD degrees conferred by the University of Cambridge, Briggs in 1926 and Wood in 1924. Although they attended the Congress as 'student representatives', Briggs had been a lecturer at Sydney for ten years and was studying for his PhD while on leave, and Wood had completed his PhD two years earlier.
22. J. Radford, The Chemistry Department of the University of Melbourne. Its Contribution to Australian Science 1854-1959, (Melbourne, 1978).
23. This was presumably W. H. Bragg (1862-1942), formerly Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide but by that time occupying the chair at University College, London. His son, W. L. Bragg (1880-1971), also a physicist, did not achieve professorial status until the following year, at Manchester.
24. 'Conference of Universities', Nature, 101 (1918), 207-208. The University of Melbourne has not retained Bragg's report on the conference so it has not been possible to check whether his advice concurred with the opinions of the British professors.
25. Since the PhD had been available in the United States for nearly fifty years, we can assume that Rutherford's view of the PhD, like that of Professor Higgins concerning the English language, was that 'in America they haven't used it for years' (A. J. Lerner, My Fair Lady (London, 1956), 9).
26. Ed Muirhead, A Man Ahead of His Times. T H. Laby's Contributions to Australian Science (Richmond, Victoria, 1996). Laby (1880-1946) occupied Melbourne's Chair of Physics from 1915-1942.
27. Laby papers at University of Melbourne Archives, Rutherford to Laby, letter no. 26, 5 December 1921, cited in Ed Muirhead, A Man Ahead of His Times. T H. Laby's Contributions to Australian Science (Richmond, Victoria, 1996), p 19. Present author's italics.
28. Abstract of the Proceedings of a Conference of the Representatives of the Several Australian Universities, Sydney, 26-28 May 1920, p. 17.
29. Bertram Dillon Steele (1870-1934) graduated BSc from the University of Melbourne in 1898, and studied in London and Breslau, Germany, before being awarded the first DSc by his old University. He was foundation Professor of Chemistry at Queensland (1910).
30. Gordon Johnson, University Politics (Cambridge, 1994). One is reminded of Barnett Cocks' description of a committee as 'a culde-sac down which good ideas are lured and then quietly strangled'.
31. Abstract of the Proceedings of a Conference of the Several Australian Universities, Adelaide, 21-22 August, 1924, pp. 5-8.
32. University of Queensland Archives, UQA S9, Volumes of minutes of the meetings of the Board of Faculties (meeting of 10 September 1924), and UQA S2, Volumes of agenda for Senate meetings (meeting of 26 September 1924).
33. M. I. Thomis, A Place of Light and Learning. The University of Queensland's First Seventy-five Years (St Lucia, Queensland, 1985), p. 134. Copies of the respective docu-ments were kindly provided by the University Archivist.
34. Copies of minutes of the relevant meetings were kindly provided by the University Archivist.
35. Copies of minutes of the meetings of Council on 16 September and 18 November, and the Board of Studies on 31 October were kindly provided by the Archivist of the University of Tasmania.
36. The University Archivist kindly provided information regarding correspondence on Docket 484/1924 of Series 200, University of Adelaide Archives; the meeting of the Education Committee on 27 October 1924 (Series 23) and University Council meeting of 31 October, 1924 (Series 150).
37. Copies of the relevant sections of the minutes of Professorial Board meetings were kindly provided by the University Archivist.
38. James Kenner, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Sydney 1924-1927, had recently arrived from Sheffield and perhaps the Board valued his recent experience in Britain. He had taken his BSc at East London Technical College and PhD from Heidelberg (1907), following which his DSc was awarded by the University of London in 1914; Lord Todd, 'James Kenner 1885-1974', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 21 (1975), 389-405.
39. C. Turney, U. Bygott and P. Chippendale, Australia's First. A History of the University of Sydney Volume 1 1850-1939, (Sydney, 1991), pp. 476-177.
40. The relevant documentation is in the Registrar's Correspondence file 1925/166 at the University of Melbourne archives.
41. 'British Universities and Empire Development', Nature, 113 (1924), 730-731.
42. Peter Giles (1860-1935) was a comparative philologist who was Master of Emmanuel College 1911-1935 and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 1919-1921.
43. R. M. Mcleod and E. K. Andrews, 'Scientific careers of the 1851 Exhibition scholars', Nature, 218 (1968), 1011-1016;
44. See also Ian D. Rae, 'They had to go: Australian chemists who took Doctor of Philosophy degree in Britain, 1945-65', Historical Records of Australian Science, 12(3) (1999), 331-361.
45. T. W. Edgeworth David (1858-1934) was Professor of Geology at the University from 1891-1924.
46. Record of the Jubilee Celebrations of the University of Sydney (1902), pp. 113-114.
47. D. O. Masson (1858-1937) held the chair at Melbourne from 1886-1923.
48. Thomas Easterfield of the Victoria University of Wellington, commenting on the low level of chemical research in Australia, blamed the lack of support for research by universities for the fact that there was only one recognised school of research, being that of Masson at Melbourne: T. H. Easterfield, 'The position of chemical research in Australasia', Report of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 12 (Brisbane, 1909), 115-120.
49. Sam Anvers and Leon Peres, 'Science', in Australian Society. A Sociological Introduction, eds A. F. Davies, S. Encel and M. J. Berry (Melbourne, 1977), pp. 287-302, especially p. 292.
50. G. Currie and J. Graham, The Origins of CSIRO. Science and the Commonwealth Government 1901-1926, (Melbourne, 1966), p. 139.
51. J. Poynter and C. Rasmussen, A Place Apart. The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (Carlton South, 1996), p. 95.
52. This was the title of an essay by A. A. Phillips which was published in the Australian literary journal Meanjin in 1950, and subsequently used as a chapter title for some collected writings: A. A. Phillips, The Australian Tradition (Melbourne, 1958), pp. 112-117.