Person

Crock, Gerard William (1929 - 2007)

AO KS

Born
14 September 1929
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Died
23 December 2007
Occupation
Ophthalmologist

Summary

Gerard William Crock became the first medical specialty chair in Australia when was appointed Melbourne University's foundation Ringland Anderson Professor of Ophthalmology in 1963. This was only the second chair ever to be held in ophthalmology within the Commonwealth. He was 34 years old when he became a professor. In this position he established the university's department of ophthalmology and also had a large part in cultivating the facilities of the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. He was chairman of the hospital's senior medical staff from 1982 to 1987.

Skip to

Details

Crock was a pioneer of new retinal imaging technologies and was also involved in the development of many ingenious microsurgical tools including the Schultz-Crock binocular ophthalmoscope, which was awarded the Prince Philip Design award in 1975.

In 1977 he and Melbourne University Optometry Professor Barry Cole established the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic for the Association for the Blind. It was the first of its kind in Australia.

Chronology

1953
Education - Bachelor of Medicine, University of Melbourne
1963 - 1987
Career position - Ringland Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Melbourne
1975
Award - Prince Philip Design award for the Schultz-Crock ophthalmoscope
1982 - 1987
Career position - Chairman, Senior Medical Staff, Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital
1985
Award - Officer of the Order of Australia
1990
Award - Knight of the Order of St John of Jerusalem (KStJ) - for 30 years of work at St John's Eye Hospital

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Journal Articles

  • Cole, Barry L., 'Gerard William Crock AO KStJ 1929 - 2007: inaugural Ringland Anderson Professor of Ophthalmology in The University of Melbourne', Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 91 (2) (2008), 195-7. Details
  • McAllister, Ian L.; Keeler, Richard; and Burrows, Clive, 'Schultz-Crock binocular ophthalmoscope', Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, 41 (2013), 603-6. Details
  • Taylor, H. R., 'Obituary: Professor Gerard Crock AO', British Journal of Ophthalmology, 93 (1) (2009), 133-4. Details

Newspaper Articles

  • Taylor, Hugh and Stephens, Tony, 'Doctor saved sight of thousands: Gerard Crock, 1929-2007', Sydney Morning Herald (2008). Details

Resources

Rebecca Rigby

Created: 24 August 2012, Last modified: 15 June 2022

EOAS ID: biogs/P005252b.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/P005252b.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