Members of Council
President
Prof Jim Reid
Professor Jim Reid is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Plant Science at the University of Tasmania. He was Dean of Science, Engineering and Technology at the University of Tasmania from 2001-2009 and Director of the Forestry CRC from 1992-2001. He holds PhD and DSc degrees from the University of Tasmania for his work on plant development and genetics. He has published over 200 papers on plant hormones and eucalypt genetics and is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher based on this work. Honours include election to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Royal Society of Tasmanian Medal, David Syme Research Medal (Melbourne University), Distinguished Service Medal and Distinguished Alumni Award (University of Tasmania). He has been a visiting fellow at the Universities of London, Bristol and Cornell.
Vice President
Prof Sue Jones
Sue Jones is Professor and Head of the School of Zoology at the University of Tasmania and holds a national position as ALTC Discipline Scholar for Science. She has a BSC (Hons) in Zoology from the University of Tasmania, and a PhD from the Australian National University. Upon returning to Tasmania, she ran the Endocrinology Laboratory at the Royal Hobart Hospital for three years before taking a career break to have her children. She has worked at the University of Tasmania since 1987, and her career path has balanced research with teaching and mentoring the next generation of zoologists. Her contributions to university teaching have been recognised by several major awards, including the 2008 ALTC National Award for teaching Excellence (Biological Sciences, Health and related Studies). As a reproductive biologist, her research focuses on the physiology of viviparous lizards and marsupials.
Immediate Past President
Prof Pat Quilty
Professor Patrick Quilty was Chief Scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division and now Honorary Research Professor at the University of Tasmania with experience in academia, industry and federal government. He first visited Antarctica (1965/66) with the University of Wisconsin and has been on many tourist ventures. He participated in many marine science programs and has published over 200 scientific papers.
Honours include Membership of the Order of Australia (AM), Distinguished Alumnus from the University of Tasmania, US Antarctic Services Medal, Royal Society of Tasmania Medal, Distinguished Lecturer (Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia) and speaker in the North American Speaker Series (1998/99). He has five species, a range of nunataks and a bay named in his honour. He is a patron of the University of Western Australia Geoscience Foundation.
Honorary Secretary
Tony Culberg
Tony was born in Sydney, NSW, and completed a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW and, after moving to Tasmania in 1974, a Diploma of Education at UTas. He then taught in both High Schools and at TAFE until being declared redundant in 1990.He first visited Tasmania in 1966, as a bushwalker on the Overland Track and then to Frenchman’s Cap. Five years later he attended a national caving conference in Hobart, followed by two weeks of caving at Exit Cave, Mt Anne and Mole Creek.Since 1990 he has both built up a tax practice and sold most of it so he could semi-retire. Tony has been irregularly heard on ABC Radio in Tasmania, commenting on tax issues and taking talkback sessions, since 1989.He moved to Tasmania to pursue his recreation of caving, as Tasmania has the best accessible caves in Australia. He has no particular scientific training, other than that acquired while caving. In the early 1990s he ran a tourism venture, taking adventurous souls into, first, Exit Cave and later Mystery Creek Cave, both located south of the Ida Bay Railway. For some years he audited the books of the Royal Society of Tasmania and this year, 2009, stepped up to the more active role of Secretary.
Honorary Treasurer
Harman Mulder
Harman was born in Java during World War 2. His family was interned by the Japanese until the end of the war when they returned to Holland. His father had, however, died during the invasion. In 1950 the family emigrated to Australia and settled in Kingston, south of Hobart. Harman’s high school education was at Hobart High, followed by one year at Amsterdam University. In 1968 he completed, as a part-time student, a BA atUTAS and followed this with other courses at Monash University, Melbourne College of Divinity and Chisholm. Harman has worked as a Child Welfare Officer in Hobart and as a psychologist with the Australian Defence Forces, first in Tasmania and Victoria, then Queensland, then again in Victoria as Senior Psychologist. He later became the National Personnel Manager for H.C. Sleigh in Melbourne before returning to welfare as Assistant Director of Melbourne Family Care and concurrently as Manager of Dandenong Family Care. Following private practice in Melbourne, Harman returned to Hobart in 2002. His interested include chess, bushwalking and music. He became an RST member in 2010.
Councillor
Anthony Bill
Anthony Bill spent his childhood on the outskirts of Bendigo surrounded by the bush and the extensive industrial relics of the gold-mining era. After obtaining a degree in chemical engineering from Monash University, he worked in the pulp and paper industry and in metal refining in range of operational, engineering, and research roles commissioning and optimising industrial processing plants. After a less than successful period as a paper-machine process engineer, Anthony is now completing a PhD in statistics and education, jointly funded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a USA based software manufacturer. He has published several papers, presented at conferences both locally and overseas, and has recently been invited as a guest speaker for a key international statistics conference in 2010.Anthony considers himself a Tasmanian by choice and a scientist by inclination. He enjoys sailing and the great Tasmanian outdoors and is bewildered by why anyone would choose to live anywhere else. His other current research interest is a study of the Australian magpie in urban environments.
Councillor
David de Little
I am Tasmanian born and educated and have lived here all my life. At the University of Tasmania I studied Agricultural Science and completed a PhD in Entomology in 1979. I took up employment as a forest biologist with the forestry arm of APPM at Burnie. During my 26 year career with that company which ended up as Gunns Ltd., I managed a research team that developed the breeding strategy and forest health program that underpinned the company’s eucalypt plantation program. I was involved in the early development and management of the Forestry Cooperative Research Centre. Since leaving Gunns Ltd in 2002, I have worked as a Forest Health Consultant. I am also an honorary Curator of Entomology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. I now live at Surveyors Bay in southern Tasmania with my wife, Cath, a retired science teacher. I have been a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania since 1970, however living for many years in Burnie I was not able to be an active member. I look forward to changing that situation.
Councillor
Dr Albert Goede
Albert was born in The Netherlands in 1935. In 1951 the family migrated to Tasmania. He was forced to leave school and served an apprenticeship as a compositor with Mercury Press in Hobart. In 1959 he enrolled at the University of Tasmania as a part-time science student and completed his BSc in 1962 majoring in Geology and Geography. The following year he became the first science student at UTAS to do honours in Geomorphology. This was followed by a year as a research student at ANU.
In 1965 he returned to the University of Tasmania after being appointed to a lectureship in Geography and remained there until his retirement in 1997. His research focused on the hydrology of rivers and caves, the evolution of coastal landforms in Victoria and the Bass Strait Islands and the use of trace element and stable isotope variations in stalagmites as a source of information on past climate change. His research on caves also included a study of the timing of the extinction of the megafauna in Tasmania and the ice age occupation of a cave in the Florentine Valley by Tasmanian Aborigines.
In retirement he maintains an active interest in a diverse range of scientific topics including climate change. He has given courses at U3A Clarence and Hobart since the year 2000 and has been Honorary Treasurer of the Royal Society of Tasmania since the year 2002. His favourite pastimes are bushwalking, wildflower photography and gardening.
Councillor
Anita Hansen
Anita was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and moved to Australia in 1959.Anita has a Bachelor of Fine Art and Grad Diploma in Plant and Wildlife Illustration, and worked as a scientific illustrator/designer before completing a research based Master of Fine Art, University of Tasmania in 2007 (nineteenth century orchid illustrations by Tasmanian artist William Archer (1820-1874)). She is currently a PhD student with the School of Art, University of Tasmania, the research is based on the nineteenth century natural history art (original art, prints and illustrated books) held by the major state institutions, and the reasoning behind the collection of this type of material. It is a joint project with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, as was the Master’s degree.
Councillor
Graeme Rayner
Councillor
Zane Smith
Zane was born in Trowutta and grew up on the NW Coast of Tasmania before moving to Victoria with his family for secondary school. He completed a Bachelor of Applied Science (Geology) at Bendigo CAE in 1984. His interest in geology was sparked by his childhood experiences in NW Tasmania exploring the coastline and hinterland of the Cape Country. After marrying Leanne Matheson, Zane moved with her to the Latrobe Valley where he worked for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. His role was as a brown coal geologist, assisting with the regional drilling programs and in the open-cut mines. After this, he co-founded a software company Datcol Pty Ltd, which specialised in field sample data logging systems. This company traded for 12 years until 1999. In 2001 the whole family, Leanne and their two children (a boy and a girl) moved back to Tasmania. Zane has since then worked in computer related roles with the AAD and Aurora Energy. He maintains a keen interest in bushwalking, history and the natural sciences, and after four decades playing hockey laments that he still hasn’t learned when to back-pass the ball.
TMAG Representative
Bill Bleathman
Honorary Editor
Dr Margaret Davies
Margaret Davies was educated at the University of Tasmania, the ANU and the University of Adelaide from where she retired in 2002 after an academic career at that institution of 30 years. Her research focused on the taxonomy and systematics of the Australopapuan frog fauna with an interest in osteology. She has discovered and named 34 species of frog during that research career and has published 118 papers, books and edited works. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia, she served as Secretary, Editor (for 13 years), Vice-President, President and Minute Secretary before returning to Tasmania where she became Honorary Editor of the Royal Society of Tasmania, a position she claims is to keep the brain active.
Honorary Librarian
Andrew Parsons
Andrew succeeded Graeme Rayner as Senior Librarian (Physical Collections) at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) Library in late February 2010. Prior to this succession, Andrew worked in the Resources & Access (R&A) section of UTAS Library for a little over 18 months, for the most part supervising reclassification of UTAS Library’s northern collections from Dewey to Library of Congress. Before his relocation to R&A in mid-2008, Andrew worked at the Australian Maritime College (AMC) Library in Launceston for 12 years, first as Cataloguer then college Librarian. He was actively involved with the integration of the AMC and UTAS libraries during 2007, transferring to UTAS Library when amalgamation of the two libraries became official in January 2008.
Publicity Officer
Ms Mary Koolhof
Mary Koolhof teaches Psychology, English as a Second Language and Literacy at Claremont College. In 2010 she was awarded a Rotary Salamanca Vocational Award for Excellence for her work with refugee students. She is a recipient of several Goethe-Institut scholarships to study in Germany and an inaugural awardee of a Commonwealth Endeavour Language Teacher Fellowship. As Senior Education Officer for the Department of Education she managed a number of successful projects for the Department of Education including Teachers Experiencing the Antarctic, the Antarctic and Marine Science Prize, the Polar Pathways Student Prize and the KidzEd extension program for gifted students. Mary sat on the Australian International Polar Year Education, Outreach and Communication Committee. She is a Queen’s Guide who has served Girl Guides Tasmania as State Membership Adviser and Friends of World Centres Liaison. In her spare time she enjoys teaching German at Adult Education.