Person

Tisdall, Alfred Leyster (1912 - 1999)

CBE

Born
30 September 1912
Died
20 February 1999
Sandringham, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Engineer

Summary

Alfred Leyster Tisdall was a world renowned irrigation expert. His salinity control and other measures introduced to Victoria helped improve the water distribution efficiency from 45% (1950s) to 73% (1974). He was regularly consulted by overseas agencies including the United Nations and the Thai and the British Governments.

Tisdall was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in honour of his contributions to water supply and irrigation around the world.

Details

Chronology

1933
Education - Bachelor of Agricultural Science (BAgSc), University of Melbourne
1933 - 1942
Career position - Scientist with the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Merbein, Victoria
1935
Career position - Foundation Member, Australian Institute of Agricultural Science
1937
Education - Master of Science (MSc), University of Melbourne
1942 - 1945
Military service - Flight lieutenant with the Royal Australian Air Force
c. 1945 - c. 1951
Career position - Joined CSIRO in Deniliquin, New South Wales
1951 - 1962
Career position - Chief Irrigation Officer, Water Commission of Victoria
1956
Career position - President, Australian Institute of Agricultural Science, Victorian branch
1958
Career position - Commissioner and Fellow, Royal Institute of Public Administration
1960
Career position - President, Australian Institute of Agricultural Science
1961
Award - Fellow, Australian Institute of Agricultural Science
1963 - c. 1965
Career position - Deputy Chairman, Water Commission of Victoria
1965
Career position - Invited to the United kingdom by the British Government to discuss water supply matters
1965 - 1977
Career position - Chairman, Water Commission of Victoria
1966
Career event - Invited guest speaker at the International Congress on irrigation and Drainage in Delhi, India
1968
Career position - Advised the United Nations on its water project, the Awash Valley Project, in Ethiopia
1975
Award - Doctor of Agricultural Science (DAgrSc), honoris causa, University of Melbourne
1978
Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) - Chairman - Victoria Water Supply Commission

Published resources

Newspaper Articles

  • Sampson, William, 'Obituary: Alfred Leyster Tisdall. Water Commission Chief', The Age (1999). Details

Resources

Annette Alafaci

EOAS ID: biogs/P004734b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004734b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260