Person

Brett, Percy Rollo (Rollo) (1923 - 2022)

OBE FTSE

Born
11 November 1923
Kyabram, Victoria, Australia
Died
10 August 2022
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Electrical engineer, Public servant and Science administrator

Summary

Rollo Brett was an electrical engineer who, as Head of the Research Laboratory of the Post Master General's Department (and later Telecom Australia) played a key role in the conversion of operations of these departments to the metric system. His early work for the Laboratory was in the field of materials and components, and establishing standards for the use of polymer materials in telecommunications equipment. As head of the Research Laboratory he sought to strengthen its research capabilities by building links with Australia's universities. He also achieved the amalgamation of the dispersed Laboratory units to one site at the Melbourne suburb of Clayton. During the 1970s Brett was Chairman of the Telecommunications and Electronics Standards Committee of the Standards Association of Australia. He was also a member of the task force established to explore the possibility of developing Australia's first domestic satellite. Other contributions included as a member of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, the Academic Policy Committee of the Victorian Institute of Colleges, and the Radio Research Board.

Details

Chronology

1939 - 1942
Career position - Clerk, Engineering Division, Post Master General's Department
1942 - 1943
Military service - Second World War. Served with the Australian Army Topographical Survey Corps
1944
Education - Bachelor of Science (BSc), University of Melbourne
1944 - 1953
Career position - Physicist, Physical Sciences Section, Research Laboratories of the Post Master General's Department
1953 - 1958
Career position - Senior Physicist, Post Master General's Department
1958 - 1963
Career position - Section Head, Research Laboratories, Post Master General's Department
1963 - 1964
Career position - Assistant Director General and Head of the Apparatus and Services Branch, Research Laboratories, Post Master General's Department
1964 - 1975
Career position - Senior Assistant Director-General and Head, Research Laboratories, Post Master General's Department
1975 - 1979
Career position - Member of Council, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences
1975 - 1980
Career position - Head of Planning, Telecom Australia (Australian Telecommunications Commission)
1975 - 1987
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences (FTS)
1980 - 1983
Career position - Victorian State Manager, Telecom Australia (Australian Telecommunications Commission)
1987 - 2022
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE)

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Journal Articles

Resources

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P007428b.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/P007428b.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