The Western Australian Science Hall of Fame recognizes excellent and sustained scientific achievement in Western Australia.
2023 Inductee
Emeritus Professor Donna Cross OAM
Born in Western Australia, Professor Donna Cross OAM has spent most of her 40-year career working within the State. She is recognised as Australia's leading bullying prevention expert and one of the world's most respected researchers into bullying and cyber bullying. Donna Cross is currently Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Fellow at The University of Western Australia, and Chief Behavioural Advisor to the New South Wales Government.
Professor Cross's career has been dedicated to conducting rigorous research in real-life settings and translating evidence into policy and practice, to improve the mental health and wellbeing of Western Australian children and their families. Until her retirement from Telethon Kids Institute in 2022, Professor Cross led a multidisciplinary team of 42 staff and students, and was the WA Director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence — Children and Families over the Life Course, a seven-year, $32 million project focused on improving life-course outcomes for children and families experiencing deep and persistent disadvantage.
Professor Cross is an expert advisor on children's social development, bullying and aggression prevention for UNESCO, and for an array of international foundations, grant bodies and review panels.
Well-known internationally for innovative consumer and student-led bullying prevention research, and her ability to translate her research into practice, Professor Cross has actively campaigned for more than 20 years to demonstrate that bullying-related harm is common, severe and long-lasting, and that much can be done to extinguish this behaviour in children.
Every major school bullying prevention and most school wellbeing policies and curricula in Australia were driven, chaired by, or contributed to, by Professor Cross. She was a founding executive member of alliances (including the National Centre Against Bullying and Australian University Anti-bullying Research Alliance) which have driven government submissions leading to positive legislative change.
Professor Cross has been invited onto numerous state and national boards, and maintains substantial outreach engagement through mentorships at Edith Cowan University, Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia. She has also supervised 44 PhD and Masters students to completion. In 2022, in recognition of her work as an educator, public health researcher, and strong advocate for children's and adolescents' mental health and wellbeing, she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia, was inducted into the WA Women's Hall of Fame, and received the National Leadership in Health Promotion Award.
2022 Inductee
Professor Richard Hobbs
Professor Richard J Hobbs FAA is a UWA professor, IAS Distinguished Fellow and an internationally renowned ecologist. The Australian Academy of Science Fellow was awarded an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship for his research into 'Intervention ecology: managing ecosystems in the 21st century'.
Over his career, he has worked with the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology in Western Australia and worked on the dynamics of fragmented ecosystems in the Wheatbelt, becoming the Officer in Charge of the Western Australian laboratory in 1997. In 2000 Professor Hobbs took up a Chair in Environmental Science at Murdoch University and was awarded an ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship in 2006.
2020 Inductee
Professor Mark Randolph
Mark Randolph has been Professor of Civil Engineering at UWA for over 30 years, becoming one of the most highly cited geotechnical engineers in the world.
Drawn to Perth by the challenges of designing foundations in the calcareous seabed sediments surrounding Australia, he established the world-leading Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems at UWA in 1997 and in parallel was a Co-Founding Director of specialist consultancy Advanced Geomechanics. This symbiotic relationship between academia and industry led to involvement with almost all major developments on the North-West Shelf, as well as many novel design solutions for foundations, anchors and pipelines.
Among many accolades, including WA Scientist of the Year in 2013, Professor Randolph was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2011.
2019 Inductee
Professor Carol Bower
Professor Carol Bower is an internationally recognised public health researcher. She has worked predominantly with the Telethon Kids Institute (previously the WA Institute for Child Health Research), of which she was a founding researcher and where she is currently Senior Principal Research Fellow, and Director of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Research Australia ? Centre for Research Excellence.
Throughout her career, Professor Bower led a series of projects which have had a profound impact on the health of children in Western Australia and beyond. In 1980 she established Australia?s first birth defects registry (an internationally recognised model later implemented in other States). She uncovered the link between low dietary folate and neural tube defects (NTD) such as spina bifida, and instigated the world?s first public health campaign to encourage periconceptional folic acid supplementation to prevent NTD. Having led another study demonstrating that health education alone was insufficient, Professor Bower successfully lobbied for national mandatory fortification of flour with folate ? a change which has dramatically reduced the incidence of NTDs and saved more than 400 Western Australian children alone from debilitating and deadly birth defects.
Professor Bower has been equally persistent in relation to community outreach, actively forging partnerships with consumers, government, justice and health professionals to facilitate, communicate and translate paradigm-shifting research on alcohol-related harm. This includes her supervision of the recent Banksia Hill Project ? the first study in Australia to assess and diagnose young people in a youth custodial setting for FASD. Professor Bower?s dedication to community service is reflected in multiple awards in recognition of her good practice and initiatives relating to consumer and community participation in research.
As a long-serving member of multiple paediatric research committees, Professor Bower continues her contribution to science and the wider community by advancing and sharing research on child health and development.
2018 Inductee
Emeritus Professor David Blair
Professor Blair is an experimental physicist renowned for pioneering a number of precision measurement techniques used for ultra-sensitive displacement measurements, exceptionally low noise clocks and oscillators, and gravitational wave research.
His career has focused on the direct detection of gravitational waves first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 as part of his famous Theory of General Relativity. He led the establishment of the Australian International Gravitational Research Centre at Gingin, part of the School of Physics at the University of Western Australia, and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy.
Professor Blair?s work at the Research Centre contributed to the international Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) scientific collaboration through developing technology to teach supercomputers to `hear? the special sounds of gravity waves and rapidly detect the signals. He also contributed to the identification and resolution of the issue of `parametric instability? in large US twin detectors at observatories in Louisiana and Washington State, enabling the world?s first direct observations of gravitational waves in 2015. This discovery resulted in a Nobel prize in physics for three leading LIGO American physicists in 2017 and was described as `a discovery that shook the world?.
Professor Blair?s research has ensured that Australia, and Western Australia in particular, has a high profile in the international gravitational wave community. He has supervised an impressive 74 postgraduate students since 1987 and his students have gone on to successful careers and senior positions in areas including physics and astronomy.
He also led the planning and development of the Gravity Discovery Centre, a major education and public outreach facility which includes the Gingin Observatory. In 2005, he and Emeritus Professor John De Laeter AO were awarded the Australian Government Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding in Science in recognition of these science outreach activities.
Professor Blair was the recipient of the Western Australian Scientist of the Year award in 2007, was elected as Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014, and in May 2018 was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, an organisation of individuals recognised for their outstanding contributions to science and research.
After retiring as Director of the Australian International Gravitational Research Centre in late 2017, Professor Blair continues to contribute to the physics community as Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Australia and as the Outreach Program Leader at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery. He is currently supervising 10 PhD Students and continues to find ways of communicating Einsteinian physics to the wider community.
2017 Inductee
Emeritus Professor John Pate
Professor John Pate has greatly influenced plant science, particularly plant ecology and physiology, in Western Australia. His academic career commenced as Assistant Lecturer at Queens University in 1954 followed by increasing senior academic appointments at the University of Sydney, Queens University and The University of Western Australia (UWA). He was head of the botany department at UWA from 1974 to 1986.
The major focus of his work concerned the carbon and nitrogen economies of plants, especially legumes, and contributed to applied research on productivity of pastures and crops. Along the way, techniques were developed for quantifying nitrogen inputs of legumes and thereby permitting assessment of their contributions in agricultural and natural ecosystems.
Professor Pate has contributed significantly to ecological and physiological studies of native flora of Western Australia, particularly on the structural and functional adaptations displayed for combating various forms of environmental stress. Professor Pate has published extensively with over 500 publications including books, monographs, reviews and refereed research articles.
Professor Pate?s scientific career was honoured by election to the Australian Academy of Sciences in 1980 and to the Royal Society, London in 1985. John will be remembered by his many students as a hard taskmaster, relentless in pursuit of excellence and with an Irish sense of humour and fun which lightened many a load.
2015 Inductee
Professor Cheryl Praeger AM FAA
Professor Cheryl Praeger is one of the world's leading mathematicians, best known for her works in group theory, algebraic graph theory and combinatorial designs. Professor Praeger has promoted mathematics through research and professional associations.
Professor Praeger was appointed as a member of the Order of Australia in 1999 for her service to mathematics in Australia. In 2003 she received the Centenary Medal of the Australian government and in 2009 was made the WA Scientist of the Year. She is a recipient of the Moyal Medal, George Szekers Medal and Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal.
In 2014 she was elected an Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society. In 2015 she was also inducted in the WA Women's Hall of Fame and was awarded the Mehdi Behzad Prize of the Iranian Mathematical Society, for management in mathematics.
2014 Inductee
Emeritus Professor Alan Robson AO CitWA FTSE
Emeritus Professor Alan Robson AO was elevated into the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame in recognition of his outstanding contribution to scientific research and tertiary education across his career. Emeritus Professor Robson was Vice Chancellor of UWA from 2004 until 2013, and Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost since 1993.
Professor Robson chaired the Group of Eight and was Deputy Chair of the Council of the National Library and Universities Australia. He was a member of the Western Australian Science Council and the CSIRO board.
In 2003, Professor Robson was made a Member of the Order of Australia, has been awarded a Centenary Medal, is an Officer of the Order of Australia and a Citizen of Western Australia.
2013 Inductee
Professor Lyn Beazley AO FTSE
Professor Lyn Beazley was the Chief Scientist of Western Australia from 2006 until 2013. In this role she has been a tireless national and international ambassador for science and science engagement in Western Australia.
Lyn undertook her undergraduate studies at Oxford University and her doctorate at Edinburgh University. Over a 30 year research career she built up an internationally renowned research team that focused on recovery from brain damage.
Her research also changed clinical practice in the treatment of infants at risk from pre-term delivery. She was awarded an Order of Australia in 2009 for service to medical science and her contribution to the development of science policy in Western Australia.
2012 Inductee
Professor Stephen Hopper AC FLS FTSE
Professor Hopper, the first non-British born Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, returned to take up a new Chair in Biodiversity at The University of Western Australia. Professor Hopper is an internationally acclaimed plant conservation biologist who has made an outstanding contribution to biodiversity preservation.
He names Australia as one of the great places on the planet to pursue biological studies? and has collaborated in the naming of more than 300 new species of plants through 40 years of field-based research, mostly in south-western Australia.
He has made significant improvements to a number of the State's conservation programs and infrastructure and, earlier this year, was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for his service as a global science leader.
2010 Inductee
Professor Fiona Stanley AC FAA FASSA
Professor Fiona Stanley is the founding director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, is an advocate for the needs of children and their families and promotes the importance of using population data to provide health, social and economic benefits to the community.
Her role in the discovery that a diet rich in folic acid during pregnancy can prevent spina bifida in babies and that cerebral palsy may be caused by factors other than birth trauma alone, such as infections or blood incompatibilities, have improved birth outcomes.
She is also widely recognised for her contributions to Indigenous child and maternal health in Western Australia.
Professor Stanley was named Australian of the Year in 2003, was honoured as a ?National Living Treasure? by the National Trust in 2004 and is the UNICEF Australia Ambassador for Early Childhood Development. The new state-of-the-art hospital being constructed at Murdoch is named the Fiona Stanley Hospital in honour of her achievements.
2009 Inductee
Professor Ian Constable AO
Professor Ian Constable AO is recognised as one of the world's leading ophthalmic surgeons.
He is the founder and director of the Lions Eye Institute, now the largest eye research institute in the southern hemisphere and dedicated to the investigation, prevention and cure of blinding eye disease. With Professor Constable at the lead, the Lions Eye Institute has made many ground breaking developments, including the Lions Eye Institute artificial cornea which is granting sight to people around the world.
Professor Constable served on the Premier's Science and Innovation Council and the Western Australia Science and Innovation Council as the Deputy Chair. He is also the foundation director of The University of Western Australia's Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science.
2007 Inaugural Inductees
Professor Barry Marshall and Dr Robin Warren
Professor Marshall and Dr Warren were recognised for their dedicated service to research when, in 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology.
They discovered the bacterium Helicobacter pylori as a cause of gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Thanks to the pioneering discovery by Professor Marshall and Dr Warren, peptic ulcer disease is no longer a chronic, frequently disabling condition, but a disease that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and acid secretion inhibitors.
