Published Resources Details
Resource Section
- Title
- Interview with Dr Keith Boardman, biochemist
- In
- Interviews with Australian scientists
- Imprint
- Australian Academy of Science, 9 Dec 1999
- Url
- https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/history/interviews-australian-scientists/dr-keith-boardman-biochemist
- Format
- HTML
- Description
Also known as "Conversations with Australian scientists".
- Abstract
Dr Norman Keith Boardman was born in Geelong Victoria in 1926. He attended Geelong High School for 5 years then did a Leaving honours year at Melbourne Boys High School. He was awarded a Dafydd Lewis Scholarship to study chemistry at the University of Melbourne, receiving a Master of Science in 1949 for his thesis on the properties and thermodynamics of molten salt mixtures.
He worked at the Wool Research Section of CSIRO for 2 years where he attempted to shrinkproof wool, then went to Cambridge in 1951 to do his PhD on the separation of proteins by ion-exchange chromatography. He received an ICI postdoctoral fellowship to continue his work at Cambridge on the separation of proteins. He received a PhD and a ScD in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge.
In 1956, Boardman returned to Australia to the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in Canberra to set up their chromatography facilities. Here he investigated protochlorophyll and its conversion to chlorophyll. His work with Dr Jan Anderson characterised the chlorophyll complexes sufficiently to show that the two photochemical systems of photosynthesis were physically separated. Boardman was also interested in the structure and development of chloroplasts in green plants. In 1964, as a Fullbright scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles, he prepared chloroplasts and achieved cell-free synthesis of chloroplast proteins.
Dr Boardman's research interests included the adaptation of plants to their light environment. During the mid-1960s to mid-1970, he was involved in characterising the photochemical systems and looking how the photosystems and photochemical activity developed during greening. He also carried out studies on the comparative photosynthesis of sun and shade plants.
Dr Boardman was a member of the executive of CSIRO between 1977 and 1985. He became Chairman and Chief Executive in 1985 and Chief Executive in 1987 after the separation of the two positions.
Dr Boardman was awarded the David Syme Research Prize by the University of Melbourne in 1967 and the Lemberg Medal of the Australian Biochemical Society in 1969. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1972, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1978 and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 1986. He was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Newcastle in 1988. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993.
Interviewed by Professor Ralph Slatyer in 1999.
Related entries
Corporate Bodies
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Commonwealth of Australia (1949 - )
- CSIR/O Division of Plant Industry, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (1929 - c. 2014)
- CSIRO Wool Textile Research Laboratories, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (1949 - 1958)