Autumn 2006 Issue 8 ChemNEWS - The University of Sydney

The University of Sydney
Australia
General queries to:
Ms Anne Woods
Editor and Designer
Chemistry Alumni
School of Chemistry, Bldg F11
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia
Email
alumni@chem.usyd.edu.au
Phone
+61 2 9351 4504
Facsimile
+61 2 9351 3329
Web sites
http://www.chem.usyd.edu.au
http://alumni.chem.usyd.edu.au/
Professor Trevor Hambley
Head of School
ChemNEWS
Autumn 2006
Issue 8
Newsletter of the University of Sydney Chemistry Alumni
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2006.
We anticipate that this will be a great
year for the School, and it has certainly started
well with another stunning performance in the
NH&MRC and ARC Discovery grant rounds.
Of 24 Discovery applications submitted from
the School, 15 were successful, a 62.5% success
rate in the context of a national average of
24.5%. Particularly pleasing were the award
of a Professorial Fellowship to Dr Jeff Reimers,
Australian Research Fellowships to Meredith
Jordan, Palli Thordarson, and Klaas Nauta,
and Discovery grants to “first timers”, Tim
Schmidt and Chris Ling. Total new funding to
the School from this Discovery grant round was
$6.52 million. Kate Jolliffe and Ron Clarke
were awarded NH&MRC grants, our first
successes in this arena for some time.
Members of the staff of the School
have been recognised by two major awards
in recent months. Emeritus Professor Hans
Freeman has been made a Member of the
Order of Australia for his many contributions
to bioinorganic chemistry and crystallography.
This is long overdue recognition of the seminal
role Hans has played in these now vibrant
research areas. Professor Cameron Kepert was
awarded the Malcolm McIntosh Medal by the
Prime Minister. This medal is the nation’s
premier award to a physical scientist under
the age of 35 and crowns an outstanding few
years for Cameron.
Staffing changes are continuing apace
with Drs Meredith Jordan and Toby Hudson
appointed to Lectureships in Computational
Materials Chemistry. Dr Peter Rutledge has
From the Head
just joined us from University College, Dublin
as a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and Peter
Harrowell has been promoted to Professor. We
are in the process of appointing a new Professor
of Organic Chemistry and a new Director of
First Year Studies, and will make two other
academic appointments during the year. I
keep hoping that the pace of staffing change
will slow down, but, with the success of the
School, it is inevitable that our staff will receive
attractive offers from elsewhere.
The building is also undergoing some
dramatic changes with major renovations
on a number of fronts. A state-of-the-art
Materials Chemistry Laboratory is about to be
constructed at a cost of more than $1 million.
This will house Cameron Kepert’s group and
other materials chemistry groups. Construction
is also about to start on a multilab spectroscopy
facility incorporating mass spectrometry,
vibrational spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy
including a new femto-second laser. This
too will cost close to $1 million and other
renovations on a similar scale will take place
either later this year or early next year. At that
point, all of the School’s research space will
have been renovated over a 15 year period
and our focus will move to the increasingly
urgent need to find additional space though
the construction of a new building.
Professor Trevor Hambley
Head of School

Molecular Materials
The past decade has seen something of
a sea change in the investigation of
molecular solids: once regarded as little
more than symmetrical arrangements
of discrete molecular entities, these
materials have taken their rightful
place next to non-molecular solids as
extended lattices capable of interesting
and useful co-operative effects. Much
of the impetus for pursuing these
materials and their novel properties
is the considerable diversity afforded
by molecular chemistry, a feature that
allows a potentially limitless degree of
complexity and, therefore, function by
design.
The various research directions
in my group can all be traced to a
fascination with how the structures
of molecular materials relates to their
physical and chemical properties, be
they host-guest, electronic, magnetic,
optical, mechanical, etc.. In short, the
goal is an improved understanding of
how chemical structure imparts specific
materials function. In exploiting this
knowledge in the design of new systems
with new properties, we are tackling a
2
by
Professor Cameron Kepert
number of exciting challenges: e.g., Can
new materials be designed to perform
highly specific host-guest functions such
as the recognition of right/left-handed or
paramagnetic/diamagnetic molecules?;
Is it possible to create materials that
change colour, shape, magnetism, etc. in
response to changes in environment, and
therefore act as sensors or data storage
media?; Can hydrogen gas be stored
efficiently in nanoporous materials?; Can
molecular materials be designed that
shrink upon heating?
Nanoporous Molecular Frameworks
A
principal research focus of my group
is the synthesis of new materials
that display nanoporosity, i.e., the ability
to retain structural integrity following
the desorption and sorption of guest
molecules. Examples to come out of our
lab include crystals that are 80% porous,
i.e., only a fifth of the material is made up
of atoms, the rest being a vacuum. New
in-situ single crystal X-ray diffraction
and diffuse X-ray scattering techniques
have been developed to map out the
immensely rich host-guest chemistry
of these phases, which includes extreme
flexibility in some of the framework
hosts.
Electronic Switching. We have recently
exploited the versatility of molecular
chemistry to develop truly “smart”
nanoporous materials that can switch
between different electronic states. This
has been shown to occur in response
both to the exchange of guest species,
an effect that provides a new mechanism
for chemical sensing, and to changes in
temperature, pressure and irradiation.
The coupling of these effects is expected
to lead to highly unusual host-guest
properties and to instances where guestexchange
processes can be stimulated
externally, e.g., by shining a light on
the material.
Chirality. The separation of right- and
left-handed molecules within nanoporous
materials is an important long-standing
challenge that has, until recently,
been severely hampered by the elusive
nature of chirality in solids. We have
successfully developed two approaches
to overcome this challenge: the use of
chiral ligands, and the incorporation
of chiral molecular templates. Notable
achievements include the synthesis of the
first homochiral nanoporous phases and
the demonstration of enantioselective
guest-loading in these materials.
Magnetism. Materials displaying both
nanoporosity and magnetic ordering
– properties that are largely inimical
– have long been sought for systematic
investigations of molecular magnetism
and magnetic host-guest interactions.
We have recently created the first
truly nanoporous magnets by bridging
inorganic chains and layers through
short molecular linkers. Of particular
note here is a material that converts
to a magnet when dehydrated, despite
there being no associated change to the
framework structure (see figure). Efforts
are underway to determine the influence
of other guests, including paramagnetic
molecules, on the magnetic properties of
such host lattices.
ChemNEWS
Hydrogen Storage. Recent results
have shown that nanoporous molecular
frameworks are outstanding candidates
for the efficient storage of hydrogen gas,
an essential step in the development of
a proposed hydrogen economy. Current
efforts are directed at mapping out the
structural features that maximise both
the surface-dihydrogen physisorption
interaction, thereby favouring loading
under ambient conditions, and the
surface area per mass and volume,
thereby increasing total hydrogen
loading capacity for transport and
stationary storage applications.
Other Properties. With the limitless
versatility of coordination chemistry and
ligand design at our fingertips, endless
further exciting challenges exist. These
include guest-dependent fluorescence
and electrical conductivity, and the
combination of multiple structural
features within the one material, e.g.,
chirality and spin-crossover, to achieve
a chiral sensor.
Negative Thermal Expansion Materials
Over the past four years my group
has established a broad new family
of materials that display the highly
unusual property of negative thermal
expansion (NTE; i.e., contraction upon
Issue 8, Autumn 2006
warming). This family provides the
most pronounced NTE behaviour ever
observed – up to three times that of any
material previously discovered. Using a
combination of diffraction, scattering,
spectroscopic techniques and theoretical
approaches we have successfully
elucidated the structural mechanism
for NTE in these phases: in a simplified
picture, this can be understood as the
transverse displacement of molecular
units within the structures – a so-called
“molecular skipping rope” effect – where
increasing vibrational amplitude draws
distant atoms closer together with
increasing temperature (see figure). The
pursuit of commercial applications for
these materials has led to the initiation of
a University of Sydney spin-off company,
UCOM Ten. This company has secured
substantial venture capital investment
and has a CEO of the highest pedigree(!),
Dr Thomas Barlow (a University of
Sydney Chemistry graduate; see Profile
on Page 10).
Brief History
Nanotubular Clays
Whilst there has been considerable
excitement in recent years in the
formation of new nanotubular systems
such as those of carbon, the fact that
naturally occurring nanotubes exist and
may be obtained at low cost and high
volume has been largely overlooked.
Of these, we have been interested
particularly in exploring the hostguest
chemistry of the clay halloysite,
which forms with 20 nm tubular
pores. Exciting achievements include
the molecular surface modification of
these phases to favour the loading of
a range of different guests, and the
development of strategies for filling the
nanotubes (see figure). We are currently
pursuing high-volume applications of
these materials in molecular controlled
release (e.g., of agrochemicals) and as
selective molecular sorbents (e.g., for
environmental clean-up).t
Cameron grew up in Perth, Western Australia, and completed his Honours degree in Chemistry at the University of Western
Australia under the supervision of Prof. Brian Figgis in 1991. Following a 6 month period as a Research Associate, he travelled
to London on a Hackett Scholarship to undertake a PhD in Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain/University of London
under the supervision of Professor Peter Day. His PhD research involved the synthesis and characterisation of molecular charge transfer
salts, with focus on novel electronic phenomena including conductivity/superconductivity and magnetic ordering transitions.
In 1995, Cameron took up the position of Junior Research Fellow (Christ Church) at the University of Oxford, a position
allowing him the academic freedom to launch into a new field of research – namely, molecular framework materials (and, happily, the
opportunity to again live in the same city as his partner, Dale, who undertook a doctorate in Medical Imaging/Engineering). During
this time he collaborated closely with Prof. Matt Rosseinsky in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, where he also had interactions
with Prof. Dermot O’Hare and Prof. Paul Beer. Research achievements in those formative years included the first demonstrations of
nanoporosity in hydrogen bonded and coordination framework materials.
Since coming to the University of Sydney in 1999 as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, Cameron moved through the ranks
to Senior Lecturer (2002) and Associate Professor (2005) before taking up the position of Professor and ARC Federation Fellow at
the beginning of this year. He is the recipient of the Malcolm McIntosh Prize of the Australian Government (2005), the Le Fèvre
Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science (2004), the Edgeworth David Medal of the Royal Society of NSW (2004),
the Rennie Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2003), the Selby Research Award of the University of Sydney (2002),
and the Young Tall Poppy Award of the Australian Institute of Political Science (2001). Members of his research group have taken
up prestigious postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships at Cambridge, Stanford, Princeton and Argonne, and have won numerous
awards, including the Cornforth Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. t
3

4
Profile:
Dr Jim Eckert
This is for people who have been reading Jim’s articles
on the early years at Sydney University and want
to know more about him.
did Pharmacy first, under the old
I apprenticeship system – apprenticed to a
Master Pharmacist for three years, going to
the Uni part-time and working the rest of the
time in a chemist shop. There were exams at
the end of the second and third years, followed
by the Pharmacy Board Final. This involved
prac dispensing exams, as demanding as any
exams I ever did, and a prescription-ready
paper – to test how well we could decipher very
bad handwriting! Back in the shop, I was often
surprised by what customers would ask me, an
18- or 19- year old, to give them advice about.
It must have been the white coat.
Through the Pharmacy years, I always
had in mind to continue on into Science. When
I did, I enjoyed the extra chemistry, especially
the Honours year I spent in Professor Le Fèvre’s
Physical Organic Group. Working with
Le Fèvre was a privilege, as many others, I’m
sure, would be happy to confirm. So I went
on, for an MSc and PhD with the Prof as
my supervisor. Along the way and with his
support, I worked towards a BA, mainly in
maths and statistics.
After a postdoc in London I joined the
staff here and, when Le Fèvre retired, became
a member of Hans Freeman’s newly formed
Your alumni email fowarding service now allows you to link your private email address
to a University alumni email address:
Yourname@alumni.sydney.edu.au
Inorganic Department. From the start I
gave Third Year courses on environmental
inorganic chemistry and, with Neville Gibson,
supervised Honours and Postgraduate students
working on problems in Applied Coordination
Chemistry.
We developed new methods of
chemical analysis that used transition metal
complexes in a variety of ways – as selective
extracting agents (in surfactant analysis), to
produce intense colour (in the determination
of sulfide and sulfite) and as carriers for the
preconcentration, by coprecipitation, of trace
elements from solutions at mg L -1 (parts per
billion) level. At a time when the emphasis
in this field was on developing efficient
non-selective procedures for multi-element
analysis, we showed that coprecipitation can
be highly selective and took advantage of this
effect to study individual forms of elements in
marine and esturarine waters.
At Edinburgh University and the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, I had the benefit of working
with a colleague who was using novel methods
to study the behaviour of trace elements in
natural waters. And here of course, there were
the students who trained with me. How can
I do justice to the ideas, the enthusiasm and
the good humour they brought to the place?
They made it fun.
I retired in 2002. t
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ChemNEWS
ACOVS6 - A Great Success!
A report by Dr Liz Carter
It took sixteen months of planning,
numerous committee meetings and
some good old fashioned sweat and tears
– and then it was over in a heartbeat.
I am talking about the 6th Australian
Conference on Vibrational Spectroscopy
(ACOVS6) which was held at the
University of Sydney last September and
was declared by all a great success.
The conference was well
attended – even beyond our wildest
expectations. We had over 145 delegates
some who travelled as far away as
Britain, USA, Denmark, Finland,
Germany, France, Korea, Taiwan and our
neighbours from New Zealand.
Our heartiest congratulations to Professor
Cameron Kepert who has been awarded
the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical
Scientist of the Year as part of the Prime
Minister’s Science Prizes for 2005. This
outstanding award is in recognition of
Cameron’s many seminal contributions
to molecular engineering. Read more
about Cameron on pages 2 & 3.
The 2005 Selby Research Award was
awarded to Dr Lou Rendina. This
award is worth $6,500 and is given to
an academic staff member with dual
teaching and research responsibilities
in the physical, chemical or biochemical
disciplines.
Double congratulations to Associate
Professor Tony Masters. Not only
has Tony won the Vice-Chancellors
Award for Excellence in Postgraduate
Supervision for his ongoing commitment
towards his postgraduates, he has also
won the Australian College of Educators
and Minister for Education’s 2005
Quality Teaching Award.
The School of Chemistry’s 2005 Science
Issue 8, Autumn 2006
The format of the conference
was altered somewhat from previous
conferences which have been held up
and down the east coast of Australia
since 1995. This time the conference
included a four day Workshop series
which was held prior to the conference
and was presented by a number of
distinguished speakers. Topics included:
Spectral Interpretation (Peter Griffiths,
University of Idaho), Instrumentation
and Sample Preparation in Vibrational
Spectroscopy (Heinz Siesler, University
of Duisburg-Essen), Chemometrics (Brad
Swarbrick, Sigma Pharmaceuticals),
IR Imaging (Don McNaughton, Monash
University) and IR Synchrotron (Dudley
Creagh, University of Canberra).
News in Brief
Teachers’ Workshop was held last
November and declared by all as
an overwhelming success. Over 60
high school teachers attended this
stimulating two-day workshop which
gave teachers the opportunity to operate
equipment such as a Atomic Absorption
Spectrometer and a Gas Chromatograph.
In particular, the School would like to
thank Dr Jeanette Hurst, HSC Liaison
Officer, for organizing this event.
I am pleased to be able to report that
we have three new members joining the
academic staff. Dr Meredith Jordan and
Dr Toby Hudson have been appointed to
lectureships in Computational Materials
Chemistry and will take these up when
their current Research Fellowships come
to an end. Dr Peter Rutledge joins us
as a Lecturer from the Department of
Chemistry, University College Dublin.
The 2005 C.G. and R.J.W. Le Fèvre
Postgraduate Student Lectures Awards
went to Joseph Bevitt, Justin Read
and Gemma Solomon. These lectures
were established in 1985 following a
The scientific program was
ambitious and as successful as previous
conferences. The conference program
included a Keynote Lecture, seven Plenary
Lectures (all international speakers),
parallel sessions which included a total
of fifty-two contributed lectures, three
poster sessions presenting fifty-one papers
and two symposia. In total one hundred
and twenty papers were presented.
We were honoured to have
Professor Beryl Hesketh representing the
University of Sydney at the conference
opening, with the opening address given
by Professor Michael Reid, the Director
General of the NSW Ministry for Science
and Medical Research. t
gift of $2,000 from Emeritus Professor
R.J.W. Le Fèvre and are awarded on
the recommendation of the Sydney
University Chemical Society. All three
students gave exceptional lectures and
have very impressive track records for
young scientist at the earliest stages of
their careers. Well done!
Congratulations to Dr Mark Coster on
the award of the 2006 RACI Organic
Division Lectureship for Recently
Appointed Staff.
Professor Leo Radom, ARC Australian
Professorial Fellow, was awarded the 2006
Fukui Medal, the senior medal of the
Asian Pacific Association of Theoretical
& Computational Chemists.
Congratulations to Dr Brian Hawkett
on his award of a Citation by the RACI
Polymer Division at the 28th Australasian
Polymer Symposium in Rotorua. This
award is in recognition of Brian’s scientific
achievement in the study of emulsion
polymerization and for services to the
Polymer Division.
5

Jim Eckert writes about
Even in this age of digital colour
images at the press of a button or
the click of a mouse, quality black-andwhite
photos continue to have an appeal
that isn’t easy to explain. Phillip Adams
came close in a piece that accompanied
a collection of classic Harold Cazneaux
photos. Adams wrote: “In a postmodernist,
deconstructionist, semiotic,
global media world – in which images
and ideas overwhelm in their profusion
and confusion – it’s marvellous to look
at a Cazneaux print. Thank heavens, the
picture isn’t polychromatic. Praise the
Lord, it doesn’t move.”
I’ll go along with that. So here
are some more old black-and-white photos
with Chemistry School connections,
reproduced from the University Archives
with the help of Reference Archivist Julia
Mant. And on the next page, how Harold
Cazneaux came to the University, to work
his magic.
6
Old Black-and-
White Photos
In the beginning, there was
John Smith, the University’s first
Chemistry professor, who took the two
photos on this page in the 1850s. The
self-portrait above shows Smith in his
lab examining a sample of fleece; and
on the left, he leans against a ladder
(belonging to Hudson and Son, Builders
of Botany Road), propped up outside
a north doorway of the Great Hall.
Wearing one of his trade-mark stovepipe
hats, he looks down at a watch in
his hand, timing the exposure.
Two things impress me. One
is how quick off the mark he was. The
wet collodion process favoured by Smith
had only been reported, by Frederick
Scott Archer, in 1851. The other
thing is the quality of the photos. As
Kodak’s Keast Burke noted, writing not
long after the discovery of the Smith
plates in the 1950s: “Most of the great
inventions of the last Century had to
pass through long stages of experimental
models but with photography the reverse
was the case – the images produced
by the daguerreotype and by the wet
plate processes were perfect from their
inception.”
The results may have been
“perfect” in good hands, or close to it,
but it wasn’t easy. In the wet collodion
process, collodion containing potassium
iodide was spread on a glass plate.
When the coating became firm, the
plate was dipped in a silver nitrate bath,
then mounted in the camera and, after
exposure, developed with pyrogallic acid
and fixed, as now, with “hypo” (sodium
thiosulfate). And all this had to be done
on the spot, using some kind of portable
darkroom. The process didn’t work if
ChemNEWS
the plate was allowed to dry out. Burke
especially admired the photo with the
ladder: “Technically this is the best of
all of the Professor’s pictures – it is really
magnificent.”
Overlapping with Smith and
succeeding him was Archibald Liversidge
and, after Liversidge, Charles Fawsitt.
In the photo below, taken in 1932,
Fawsitt sits at the “electro-pneumatic
ivory keyboard” of the University War
Memorial Carillon, playing for the
benefit of the Carillon Committee.
Sixty-two bells respond to his touch, the
largest of them, the one called the A.I.F.
Bell, weighing over 4 tons.
Earlier there had been “some
tension and much discussion” in the
Senate over a proposal to erect a separate
building, a campanile, for the bells but in
the end, it was decided that this would
cost too much. The bells were installed
in the Clock Tower and their sounds have
been a familiar part of University life
since the Carillon was inaugurated at an
Anzac Day ceremony in 1928.
The facts and quotes in this
piece are from the following:
Hermes editorial, Dust or Mud, 32(1)
(1926), 2.
K. Burke, John Smith’s Photography, Aust.
Photo-Rev., 63(12) (1956), 32; Early
Photographic Processes and the John Smith
Collection, Proc. Roy. Aust. Chem. Inst.,
26(8) (1959), 354.
C. Turney, U. Bygott and P. Chippendale,
Australia’s First. A History of the University
of Sydney, Vol.1, 1850-1939, Hale and
Issue 8, Autumn 2006
Harold Cazneaux at the University
In 1927, Sydney University turned
75. To celebrate the occasion,
the University commissioned Harold
Cazneaux to produce a photographic
record of its students and buildings. It was
a good choice. Cazneaux was a freelance
commercial photographer, best known
at the time for his contributions to the
monthly magazine The Home, published
between 1919 and 1942 and notable
for its “alluring mix of architecture,
domestic interiors, decorative arts,
gardens and society dames” and for
“Cazneaux’s exquisite photographs”.
Today, Cazneaux is recognised as one of
the best of Australia’s pioneer pictorial
photographers.
At the University that year,
Physics was settling into its new building,
featured by Cazneaux in his photo-essay,
and everyone was watching preparations
for the installation of the Carillon
bells. There were complaints, however,
about the “deplorable condition” of
the University grounds – “Everywhere
make-shift paths and roads … are in turn
quagmires or dust storms, according to
the elements”– and the students were on
Iremonger (1991).
Phillip Adams in Harold Cazneaux:
The Quiet Observer, National Library of
Australia (1994).
P. Watts in Harold Cazneaux Photographs,
the verge of riot when they were again
banned from taking the Commem Day
procession into Town.
The Archives have 91 glass
plate negatives taken by Cazneaux at
the University, a gift from his family,
and these show not only the wellknown
locations (such as the Main
Building below) but also many scenes
of scientific interest including the
Chemistry labs (above). t
Historic Houses Trust of NSW and
National Library of Australia (1994).
Cazneaux at the University of Sydney, Eds.
P. Bell and T. Robinson, University of
Sydney (199 ). t

John and Dorothy Lamberton (1957)
John A. Lamberton (mid 1950s)
8
8
Dr John A. Lamberton - A Legacy!
John Lamberton (1925-2002) was
born in Casino, New South Wales,
and completed a BSc Hons at the
University of Sydney in 1946. He then
moved to the University of Queensland
for a year as demonstrator in physical and
organic chemistry, and working with Dr
Lauder, before moving to the University
of Melbourne for a PhD, where he
developed his life long interest
in alkaloids. In a postdoctoral
period in Liverpool, John joined
Professor Alexander Robertson’s
group working on the structure
of quassin, followed by John’s
return to Melbourne where
he joined the CSIRO Organic
Chemistry Section. Through the
1950s and early 1960s he worked
on natural waxes including
sugar-cane and eucalypts, on
long-chain anacardiaceous
exudates, and on isoflavones,
applying the newly emerging
techniques of NMR and mass
spectroscopy. In 1965 he began
his extraordinary studies of plant
alkaloids, collaborating with
Smith, Kline and French who
tested the medicinal activity
of many of the compounds.
Through this time, John was a
major contributor to Australian
science, being at the forefront
of natural products chemistry,
exploiting new isolation
and spectroscopic structure
determination techniques. Following
the closure of the alkaloid project by the
CSIRO in the early 19 0s, John worked
on fruit fly attractants, the constituents
of Lantana that poisoned livestock,
chemo-variation in Lantana taxa to aid
specificity in choice of control insects,
defleecing agents aimed at chemical
shearing, C 4 herbicides, and anticancer
antibiotics. John Lamberton produced
some 200 research publications and
was awarded a DSc by the University of
Sydney in 1969. He retired in 1986.
The legacy of John Lamberton
and other natural products chemists in
Australia is evident in the large scale
Mrs Dorothy Lamberton (left) presents Ms Katie Cergol with the 2005 John A.
Lamberton Research Scholarship and Certificate. Head of School, Prof. Trevor
Hambley is pictured centre.
ChemNEWS
screening of natural products derived
from Australian native plants that is
now underway and the many synthetic
chemists working on the synthesis of
natural products identified as having
medicinal application.
The Faculty of Science has
recently established a new series of
scholarships known as the John A.
Issue 8, Autumn 2006
Lamberton Research Scholarships, made
possible by a generous donation from
Dr Lamberton’s widow, for which the
University is very grateful. The scholarships
are in the area of Dr Lamberton’s interests:
the chemistry of natural products, the
understanding of the relationship between
chemical structure and biological activity,
and the chemical understanding of brain
function and malfunction. One
of the goals of these scholarships
is to contribute to the continued
development of these fields by
supporting outstanding PhD
students working in these areas.
The first John A.
Lamberton Research Scholarship
winners are listed below. They
are all outstanding and are most
worthy holders of the Scholarship.
It is very pleasing for the Faculty
of Science to be able to support
these students in carrying on the
work that was of such interest to
John and is of such importance to
society. t
2005 John A. Lamberton
Research Scholarships were
awarded to:
School of Chemistry
Katie Cergol
Joshua Fischer
Discipline of Pharmacology
Renee Granger
Michelle James
Katherine Locock
A very young John Lamberton
John Lamberton Graduates (1946)
9
9

A Degree in Chemistry
10
Alumni Profiles:
Dr Thomas Barlow
In Australia, it is often said that education
has to be “relevant”. At the school level,
we hear that education must be connected
to teenage interests – hence the recent
dumbing-down of physics’ syllabuses in
NSW schools. At the university level, it is
claimed that education must be applicable to
young peoples’ career aspirations – hence the
rampant vocationalism of many contemporary
university courses.
My experience, however, has been
that the only education that matters is a good
education; and, for this reason, I feel privileged
to be a graduate of the School of Chemistry at
the University of Sydney.
I left the School in 1992 – in which
year I undertook an honours project with
Tony Haymet, then Professor of Theoretical
Chemistry. My research focused on the reaction
dynamics of freezing in supercooled water. To
my knowledge I was the first honours student
to do an experimental thesis in the Theoretical
Chemistry Department.
Afterwards I went on to complete a
doctorate at Oxford University, with Graham
Richards, doing research into drug design and
protein structure prediction. In 1996 I was
appointed Janssen Research Fellow in Bio-
Medical Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford.
I also spent some time at MIT.
But I wasn’t to stay in research – or
chemistry – for long. In the late 1990s, I
surprised myself by co-writing a screenplay,
which was made into the comedy feature
film, “Married 2 Malcolm”. This starred Mark
Addy, from the Full Monty. It cost around 3
million pounds to make, and despite being a
fairly awful film, it recouped its costs, being
eventually screened in theatres in Europe and
on cable TV and video elsewhere in the world
– including Australia, much to the amusement
of my family.
Later on, I became a weekly columnist
with the British newspaper, the Financial
Times: first with a fictional column – “On
the Breadline” – about a character who lived
in London without much money; then with
a medical column; and later with a column
about science and society. By 1999, I was writing
full-time.
Returning to Australia in 2000, I
continued to work for a while as a columnist
for the Financial Times. In 2002 however, Dr
Brendan Nelson, the Australian Minister for
Education, Science and Training, appointed me
as his Science Advisor. For a three-year term of
government, I was his key advisor on all aspects
of research policy – relating to government,
industry, research agencies and universities.
It was a role in which I gained some striking
insights into how governments see the scientific
world, and why scientists so often fail to connect
with governments.
Leaving the world of politics late in
2004, I have since written a book about the
status of Australian science and innovation
– “The Australian Miracle”. This book dispels
a number of myths about Australian science,
affords a somewhat wry perspective of Australian
politics, and provides some much needed
optimism about the prospects for innovation in
our country. It will probably leave me with no
friends, but it is due to be published by Picador
in April this year.
Perhaps as a consequence of my varied
background I am now also regularly called upon
as a consultant for a variety of public and private
organisations, providing advice on business and
innovation strategy. This year, too, I have been
appointed the CEO of a start up company called
UCOM Ten. Coincidentally, this company is
bringing to market some very exciting new
technology invented by Cameron Kepert and
his group right here in the School.
Looking back, my degree has provided
no explicit recipe for the life that has followed.
There isn’t much I’ve done that is strictly
“relevant” to chemistry. But I have consistently
found that a chemist’s outlook is a great
advantage. Whether I have been working
in research, in technology development, in
consulting, in politics, in newspapers, or the
movies, I have always believed that I couldn’t
have made a better start than with my degree in
Chemistry from the University of Sydney. t
ChemNEWS
2005 Cornforth Lecturer
Last year the Cornforth Foundation
hosted a six week visit of Professor
Roeland Nolte from the University of
Nijmegen in The Netherlands. Roeland
Nolte is Chairman of the Editorial
Board of the RSC journal Chemical
Communications and a member of the Board
of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science
(Washington). In 2003 he was awarded
the first Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Science Chair in Chemistry. His
research interests span a broad range of
topics at the interfaces of Supramolecular
Chemistry, Macromolecular Chemistry,
and Biomimetic Chemistry.
Professor Nolte delivered the
2005 Cornforth & Lions Lecture entitled
Bio-inspired Architectures by Programmed
Assembly which gave a comprehensive
overview of the history of self-assembled
molecules and their discoverers, and
walked us through some very exciting
applications of nature’s design. As one
example of their research achievements,
Professor Nolte’s group has studied the
Issue 8, Autumn 2006
catalytic activity of a single enzyme
molecule isolated on a glass plate. The
potential uses of this information are
staggering but also put into perspective
just how much we have still to learn. His
second School Seminar, Self-Assembled
Alignment Layers for Application in Liquid-
Crystal Devices described the application
of self assembly to the synthesis of
liquid-crystal display (LCDs) devices.
The technology offers the potential for
the manufacture of larger, cheaper and
improved LCDs.
In addition to these research
lectures, Professor Nolte delivered a five
week lecture course to the postgraduate
students entitled “Mastering Molecular
Matter” that clearly described progress
in areas of molecular recognition,
self-assembly, molecular materials,
supramolecular catalysis and molecular
motors. He also visited The Australian
National University, The University
of Queensland and The University of
Melbourne as part of his stay.
It has been an honour and a
pleasure for The Cornforth Foundation
to host Professor Nolte’s visit, and we
trust he and his wife Helma will return
to The Netherlands with pleasant
memories of Australia’s lifestyle and
scientific accomplishments. For
more information please contact the
Foundation’s Secretary, Dr Mal McLeod
on 9351 58 or visit http://www.
chem.usyd.edu.au/cornforth/. t
We are pleased to announce that the
Cornforth Lecturer for November 2006 will
be Professor David MacMillan, California
Institute of Technology (Caltech). Prof.
MacMillan is a rising star in the field of
catalysis in Organic Chemistry. Between
January and July 2005 his research output
included three of the top ten most accessed
articles in the Journal of the American
Chemical Society, the flagship journal of
the American Chemical Society.
Donations
The School of Chemistry would like to thank the following people for their generous donations from
September 2005 to April 2006:
Hush Fund
Dr George Bacskay
Dr Thomas Barlow (see page 10)
Professor David Beratan
Professor David Buckingham
Emeritus Professor Hans Freeman
Dr James Friend
Professor Jill Gready
Professor Sven Larsson
Professor George McLendon
Mrs Sandra Meyer
Professor Thomas Meyer
Professor Don Napper
Professor Bettina Pidcock
Professor Mark Ratner
Dr David Swanton
Professor E Von Nagy-Felsobuki
Alumni Fund
Dr Joyce Fildes
Mrs Sharyn Gaspari
Dr Stuart Grieve
Dr Steven Hacobian
Mr John Harle
Mr Ronald Hinde
Mr Phillip L King
Mr Christian Liedvogel
Dr Spiros Pandelakis
Dr Alan Williams
Fr. Mervyn JF Ziesing
Inorganic Fund
Alpha Chemicals Pty Ltd
Dr Manuel J. Aroney
Ms Carol Bae
Emeritus Prof. Hans Freeman
Mr Robert Geyer
Emeritus Professor Len Lindoy
Cornforth Fund
Ms Carol Bae
Dr Joyce Fildes
11

12
Chasing Elephants Around
did Honours (1985) and a PhD (1989) in
I Chemistry at Sydney, on “Trace elements
in marine waters” with Dr Jim Eckert as my
supervisor. Jim says that supervising me was
“never dull”. I think that’s a compliment.
In search of “adventure’’, I took up a two
year Research Fellowship at the University
of Zimbabwe, studying the distribution of
trace metals in Lake Kariba and its rivers; and
followed that with three years as Chief Ecologist
and Project Manager for Raleigh International
in Southern Africa, working in Zimbabwe and
Namibia.
Much of my work at that time and
since has involved the study of elephants
– their movement, social behaviour and general
ecology – first with Raleigh International,
then as Conservation Officer of the Kalahari
Conservation Society in Botswana and later,
as Senior Scientist and Project Manager for
the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia.
I am presently the CEO and a Trustee of the
Namibian Elephant and Giraffe Trust.
The desert-dwelling elephants of
Northwestern Namibia are our special interest
and we have now GPS-collared a number of
in a Desert
them. But tracking the elephants is only
one of the problems. Keeping the landrover
running is another. And so is satisfying the
locals that I’m not just another white out to
abuse communal lands. On a recent field trip,
the bush was very dry and the days were long
and hot. I was sunburnt for the first time in
seven years. The elephants were having to
wander long distances (up to 25 km a day) in
search of food but didn’t look too bad for it.
They are truly amazing animals and every time
I encounter them it gives me a fresh thrill.
What part has chemistry played in all
this? Good question. I haven’t been in a chem
lab since my first stint in Zimbabwe. Yet the
biological implications of chemistry are all
around me. Why is a particular species of grass
dominant in one area of the veld and nowhere
to be seen 100 m away? Or again, why do
animals prefer to drink at one waterhole and
not at others near by? Variations in water and
soil chemistry are clearly at work. I’m sure of
one thing: would-be environmental scientists
do well to get themselves a good grounding
in chemistry. t
Dr Keith Leggett
Alumni Profiles:
ChemNEWS