Home - Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation

Edition: 2026 February - 1926 Centenaries

Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar - Late summer: late January to late March - season of eels

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology

Search

(Google Custom Search) e.g. name of organisation, person, phrase or word

Resources for the History of Australian Science and Innovation

Browse Entity Indexes A-Z [2026 February edition: total 10,259 entries.]
Browse Archival Resource Indexes A-Z [2026 February edition: total 3,058 entries.]
Browse Bibliographic Indexes A-Z [2026 February edition: total 29,392 entries.]
Latest Annual Bibliography [no. 45 2023/24], published in Historical Records of Australian Science, 2025 - download the pdf for free

1926 Centenaries special edition

Featured Publication

The Origins of CSIRO: Science and the Commonwealth Government, 1901-1926 (1966) pdf available to subscribers or for purchase online. This landmark book, by George Currie and John Graham, is an account of the developments which led up to the formation of the Advisory Council of Science and Industry by the Hughes Government in 1916. It carries the story on to 1926, when a later Prime Minister, Mr S. M. Bruce, introduced the Bill to found the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. In those days there were vivid contrasts in the views of scientists, politicians and men of affairs as to how science could most effectively influence the nation's future.

Featured entries including Scientists, Engineers, Organisations and Innovations

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (1926 - 1949): Established in 1926, the CSIR worked for over twenty years, undertaking scientific research in Australia's primary and secondary industries. In 1949 the Council was renamed the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and continues to operate under this name.
Science and Industry Endowment Fund - CSIR/O (1926 - ). The Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) provides grants to science and scientists that assist in the advancement of Australian industry and community objectives. The funding body was founded in 1926 by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and re-launched in 2009 by the Commopnwealth Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation (CSIRO) after a receiving a significant contribution from the CSIRO to do so.
Board of Anthropological Research (1926 - 1974): was established in 1926 by the University of Adelaide at the instigation of John B. Cleland, T. Draper Campbell and Frederic Wood Jones. Its purpose was to mount annual expeditions into Central Australia to conduct systematic physical anthropological studies of the Aboriginal people. For nearly 50 years multidisciplinary teams from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum recorded evidence of anthropological, sociological and cultural data including linguistics, kinship, relationship to the land and spirituality.
The University of Melbourne Herbarium (1926 - ) serves as a teaching and research collection. The collection contains approximately 100,000 specimens, comprising all major plant groups including fungi, mosses, liverworts, lichens, algae, ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants. At 2019 the Herbarium also included the specimen collections from Burnley College and the Victorian School of Forestry.
Die Casters Pty Ltd (1926 - ?) was established in Richmond in 1926. It produced excellent quality castings for vehicles, such as door handles, door locks etc., and also designed, patented and supplied the industry with window winding mechanisms, and windscreen wipers and blades. Directors Roy William Newton (1900 - 1951), Arthur Henry Powell, and Reginald Arthur Powell took a lead role in these new developments.
Boardman, Norman Keith (Keith) (1926 - ) AO FAA FTSE FRS was a distinguished biochemist whose research focused on the biochemistry, development and molecular architecture of chloroplasts. In particular he worked on phytochemical systems and how plants adapt to their light environment. He pioneered physical separation of the two photochemical systems of photosynthesis. After a distinguished 20-year career as research scientist in the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Boardman joined the CSIRO Executive, serving as Chief Executive from 1987 to 1990. He further contributed to the administration and policy development of Australian science with his membership of organisations including the Prime Minister's Science and Engineering Council, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, and the Cooperative Research Centres Program. He has been a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science since 1972.
Moyal, Ann Veronica (1926 - 2019) AM FAHA was one of Australia's most distinguished historians of science and technology. Much of her career was as an independent scholar, outside the confines of academia. In 1962 she published an innovative bibliography of the history of Australian science, with a supplement in 1964. Between 1962 and 1965 she was Research Associate jointly of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences, preparing the ground-breaking A guide to the manuscript records of Australian science (1966). Later positions included as Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at the New South Wales Institute of Technology and Foundation Director of the Science Policy Research Centre, Griffith University. Moyal published (including as Ann Mozley Moyal and Ann Mozley) over a wide range of subjects including atomic energy, telecommunications, geology, nineteenth-century Australian scientists, the iconic Australian indigenous animals the platypus and the koala, autobiographical volumes, and a biography of her husband, mathematician Jose Moyal. She was editor of Search, the magazine of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, and of Prometheus.
Thornton, Ian Walter Boothroyd (1926 - 2002) FAA was Foundation Professor of Zoology at La Trobe University and Professor Emeritus from 1992. His research interests included ecosystem assembly and recovery, and biogeography and ecology of islands. He was educated at the University of Leeds, UK where he completed his PhD on Psocoptera (booklice and barklice). Next Thornton went to the Gordon Memorial University College of Khartoum in Sudan followed by appointments of Dean and Reader of Zoology at the University of Hong Kong. In 1968 he moved from Hong Kong to La Trobe University. Throughout his working life, Thornton carried out many field trips which included visits to Africa, Middle East, Asia, Micronesia, the Pacific and parts of Melanesia. His most reported work was of his studies in Krakatau which resulted in many publications including Krakatau: The destruction and reassembly of an island ecosystem.
Little, Donald James (1926 - ) AO FTSE HonFIEAust was Director-General of the Public Works Department, Victoria between 1976 and 1986, and Chairman of the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria 1974 to 1976. Before then he was a Commissioner and senior engineer of the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, Victoria. He was active within the engineering profession as a Councillor and President of the Institution of Engineers Australia in 1983, and its engineering education enterprises.
White, Mary Elizabeth (1926 - 2018) AM was a Palaeobotanist who published a number of books on Australian paleobotany including The Greening of Gondwana - The 400 Million Year Story of Australia's Plants (1986) and the Eureka prize winning After the Greening: The browning of Australia (1994). In addition to her publications Mary White was employed as a consultant by the Bureau of Mineral Resources and as a research associate for the Australian Museum in Sydney. The Museum has a collection of over 12,000 plant fossils assembled by White.
Science and Industry Research Act 1926 [Parliamentary Act] This Act marked the formal end of the Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry (1920 - 1926) and the foundation of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (1926 - 1949).
W. H. Warren Medal (1926 - ) Institution of Engineers, Australia was established, as the Warren Memorial Prize, in 1926 by the Institution of Engineers, Australia to perpetuate the memory of the first President of the Institution, the late Professor William Henry Warren, Professor of Engineering at the University of Sydney from 1884 to 1925. It is usually awarded annually for the best paper presented to the Institution on a civil engineering subject. The award was first presented in 1932.
Kernot Memorial Medal (1926 - ) Faculty of Engineering, The University of Melbourne has been awarded annually since 1926, and is awarded for "Distinguished Engineering Achievement in Australia", by the faculty of Engineering, University of Melbourne. The award was established to perpetuate the memory of Professor William Charles Kernot, the first professor of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, 1883-1909. The bronze medal is awarded upon the recommendation of a selection committee that consists of the heads of departments within the faculty, and two members of the faculty, appointed by the faculty, who do not hold teaching or research appointments in the University. It is open to persons resident in Australia, for at least five out of the last seven years before the award.
Dodd, Sydney (1874 - 1926) was Lecturer in Pathology and Bacteriology, at the Veterinary School, University of Sydney from 1911 until his death in 1926. His veterinary pathology and bacteriology research was wide ranging, but particularly of note was his research associated with the bacterial diseases of sheep. He came to Australia, in 1907 to take up a position as Principal Veterinary Surgeon and Bacteriologist, with the Government of Queensland, where he was engaged on experimental work and investigations at the stock diseases experimental farm at Yeerongpilly. He was Acting Professor, Veterinary Pathology, University of Melbourne during 1909 to 1911, where he was awarded his Doctorate.
Coghlan, Timothy Augustine (1855 - 1926) was a statistician who earned an international reputation for his work as Government Statistician for New South Wales. He joined the Department of Public Works in 1873, becoming Assistant Engineer in 1884, but found the mathematical and statistical aspects of the work more interesting. Appointed Government Statistician in 1886 amid some controversy, his first major achievement was the publication in 1887 of the Wealth and progress of New South Wales (the forerunner of The official yearbook of New South Wales) in which he elaborated on his theories of he influence of economics in populations and population growth as a reflection of prosperity. These were recurring themes throughout his career.

Introduction

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation is a register of the people, industries, corporations, research institutions, scientific societies, awards, major events and other organisations that have contributed to Australia's scientific, technological, engineering and medical research heritage - the engine of innovation in this country. Each entry has references to their archival materials, museum objects and collections, and to bibliographic resources, including historical and current literature. Read more

Research, curation and web publication is supported by the Swinburne University of Technology, Office of the Chief Scientist. Web publication is by serial editions with at least four editions per year. Each edition contains new entries and articles as well as amendments and additions to existing entries.

The Encyclopedia acknowledges all Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples of Australia, the traditional custodians of Country. It recognises and supports their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders and leaders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people of the world. We are incrementally building a gateway to sources documenting Australian First Nations' knowledge: see Theme: Australian First Nations.

We aim to be a 'living archive' and strive to represent all knowledge in an honest and respectful manner.

On 24 November 2022 (5.45pm), the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology hosted an event at the Hawthorn Campus to celebrate the next phase in the life of the Encyclopedia. For more information see Launch 2022

Adjunct Associate Professor Gavan McCarthy

Exhibitions - selected stories explored in more depth

All exhibitions from 1996 onwards

Other useful resources

Historical Records of Australian Science, Australian Academy of Science and CSIRO Publishing. The history of science, pure and applied, in Australia, New Zealand and the southwest Pacific.
Trove , National Library of Australia. Australia’s free online research portal. Trove is a collaboration between the NLA and hundreds of Partner organisations around Australia, including this Encyclopedia.
History of Australian science, Australian Academy of Science. An introduction to the historical resources of the Academy.
CSIROpedia, CSIRO and Swinburne University of Technology. Innovation shaping Australia and the world since 1916.
IsisCB Explore, An open access discovery service from the History of Science Society; built on 50-years of data in the Isis Bibliography of the History of Science.
Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community. An advanced subject search of "Australia" is good starting point.
Guide to Australian Business Records Archive Edition 2025.This guide provides links to archival and published resources relating to Australian business entities and people involved with those entities.

Data Overview

In all, there are well over 2.3 million data elements captured in 44 data tables. The data can be made available in postgresql format and json-ld courtesy of project with the Australian Research Data Commons.

If you would like to explore the network graph of the links between entities, shown below, go to the SVG view of the data for this edition. Hint: use the sliders to locate the graph - it is large. Also, you can use "Find in the Page" to find Entity ID numbers and use the Zoom function to move in and out. For example: A000200 is the node for the Australian Academy of Science.

Network graph of Entity-Entity relations in latest edition of EOAS