Abstract
Ruby Payne-Scott had numerous friends and colleagues who outlived her. Over the years, they have related stories, anecdotes and events about Payne-Scott, which the authors have collected below. Joan Freeman, a well known physicist in the UK, interacted with Payne-Scott on many occasions during World War II at RPL; the nature of these interactions has been outlined in a fascinating manner by Freeman in her autobiography, A Passion for Physics (1991).1 Freeman joined the RPL group in Sydney working on radar in June 1941, barely 2 months before Payne-Scott began her employment in August 1941. Freeman left Australia on a CSIR Fellowship in August 1946; after gaining a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics at the University of Cambridge, she had an illustrious career at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, in Harwell, UK. In 1976, she shared the Rutherford Medal of the Institute of Physics with R.J. Blin-Stoyle. Freeman married the physicist John Jelly (of Cerenkov radiation fame) in 1958; the two had met in Cambridge in 1948. John Jelly died in 1997, preceding his wife’s passing by 8 months; Joan Freeman died on 18 March 1998 in Oxford. Nessy Allen (1990) has written a fascinating account of the lives of Freeman and Makinson.2
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Notes
- 1.
Freeman’s assessment of Payne-Scott’s personality and political views are summarized in Chaps. 13 and 15, her bush walking activities in Chap. 11, and the marriage controversy in Chap. 4. On 24 October 1952, Joan Freeman wrote Ron Bracewell congratulating him on his engagement to Helen Eilliot. Joan may have regretted that she left the field of radiophysics as she had begun a new career in nuclear physics: " I often regret very much that I somehow worked myself out of the radio line, it seems to be very profitable and quite exciting these times." ( Bracewell archive, July 2009)
- 2.
“Australian Women in Science – A Comparative Study of Two Physicists” (1990).
- 3.
In a few publications in Australia during the last 10 years, the claim has been made that Payne-Scott was also a smoker; we think this is quite unlikely.
- 4.
Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987), a famous Australian author, was the Librarian at RPL and National Standards Laboratory from 1942 to 1950. With Flora Eldershaw, Barnard wrote five major works of fiction using the single pseudonym, M. Barnard Eldershaw. Their collaboration included A House is Built (1929) and the futuristic novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. (This novel was censored on publication in 1947.) Barnard wrote an unpublished manuscript in 1946 (the date is uncertain) entitled One Single Weapon, a history of the RPL radar effort. This manuscript of over 300 pages is in the Basser Library of the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra as well as in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. An accompanying note with the manuscript at the Basser Library states: “This manuscript of the history of radar was commissioned by [RPL] after the Second World War, and owing to some disagreements on factual matters between the author and some members of the Division was never published.” In the same note, Bowen also was reported as being uncertain about some of Barnard’s conclusions. Like Payne-Scott, Barnard had also attended Sydney Girls’ High School and the University of Sydney (first class honours in 1918).
- 5.
From Freeman’s autobiography. Rachel Makinson has told us (2007) that the women at RPL during the War were seldom allowed to work at the field stations due to the lack of toilets for women! In particular, they were not permitted to visit RAAF bases in the Sydney area.
- 6.
Freeman has written about a party that she attended on the night of 16 August 1939 for the wedding of Rachel and Dick Makinson. Rachel had just arrived by ship from England; the wedding occurred some hours later in a Registry Office in North Sydney. Dick was Freeman’s quantum mechanics lecturer; her claim that Dick, an Australian, was an especially poor lecturer is not accepted by Rachel Makinson. Rachel and Dick had met while he was doing his Ph.D. at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in the late 1930s.
- 7.
David was born in August 1941, the younger son, Robert, in January 1956. See also footnote 11 this chapter.
- 8.
In late August 1951, only a few months before Peter was born, Bill and Ruby Hall moved into their partially completed Oatley house which had as yet no water or electricity. NAA: A1/1/1, Part 6.
- 9.
She lost 3 stone (42 lbs or 19 kg) during this period.
- 10.
Richard E.B. Makinson (1913–1979) was a well known Australian physicist (condensed matter) who was quite controversial in the 1940s–1950s. Phillip Deery (2000) has written a gripping article, “Scientific Freedom and Post-War Politics: Australia, 1945–1955”, describing the price that Dick Makinson paid for his left-wing and publicly admitted Communist views. He was never considered for promotion to professor at the University of Sydney School of Physics, possibly due to the influence of ASIO. Later, he was promoted to Associate Professor at Macquarie University, 1968–1978. Dick Makinson was also associated indirectly with the Tom Kaiser affair (starting with the Kaiser demonstration in London on 27 July 1949) which involved the CSIRO, MI5, the US Department of State and ASIO (see Deery, “Science, Security and the Cold War: an Australian Dimension”, 1999; also see footnote 17 Chap. 7 and footnote 78 Appendix H). Makinson was the founder of the “Kaiser Protest Committee” in Sydney, in September 1949. His most vocal opponent was the famous Liberal Party member of the Australian parliament, W.C. Wentworth (1907–2003), who said in a debate on 6 June 1952: “This man [Makinson], who organised what was in effect treasonable conspiracy, remains a lecturer in physics at Sydney University … and I believe that Dr. Makinson is an embryo Dr. Fuchs [the confessed atomic spy who had been a British participant in the Manhattan project when he passed information to the Soviets].”
- 11.
Letter from John D. Murray and Joan Murray, 26 January 2004. In Chap. 7 we suggest that the miscarriage may have occurred in late 1946.
- 12.
- 13.
Other colleagues have suggested that Payne-Scott was not quite so open-minded.
- 14.
Partly based on an interview with Bernard and Crys Mills in Roseville (Sydney) on 1 April 2007.
- 15.
Letter to Goss, 14 September 1997.
- 16.
This transfer was discussed by Pawsey and McCready by letter during Pawsey’s overseas trip in 1947 and 1948. NAA: C4659, 8.
- 17.
Described in three papers in the Australian Journal of Scientific Research (Bolton and Westfold 1950a, b, 1951).
- 18.
From the PC minutes (prepared by Christiansen); the dilution factor for radio stars was assumed to be 10−3 compared to 10−13 for visible stars.
- 19.
Mills told Goss on 1 April 2007 that the exchange between Ruby and Kevin went as follows: Kevin responded “Well, that’s what John Bolton told me.” Then Ruby was quoted by Mills as saying: “Well, that doesn’t matter if it’s wrong.” Remarkably, there was extensive correspondence in September 1950 between Bowen and Pawsey about this PC meeting of July 1949 (NAA: C3830, F1/4/PAW/2). Pawsey was in Europe and met Bolton at the URSI Conference in Zurich. There was a conflict brewing between Bolton and Piddington about the interpretation of all sky radio continuum images based on distributions of radio stars, combined with thermal emission throughout the Milky Way. During this discussion, the details of the July 1949 presentations by Bolton and Westfold were reconstructed. Pawsey wrote to Bowen (9 September 1950) about Westfold: “The colloquium took place just before Westfold left [for Oxford] and may be remembered from a criticism by many of us of some other allied data which Westfold put forward and finally withdrew.” Bowen replied on 22 September 1950 to Pawsey summarising the colloquium given by Bolton and Westfold: “… Bolton confined himself more or less to a statement of results. Westfold, however, embarked on some ideas about the mechanisms … and ran into some criticisms … These criticisms prevented him finishing what he was going to say, and this appears to have been the crucial point.” The Westfold and Bolton papers are summarised in footnote 18 this chapter; Piddington’s rival paper, “The Origin of Galactic Radio-Frequency Radiation” appeared in 1951.
- 20.
Betty Hall married another Bill Hall who was not related. Since both “Bills” were in the SBW, each was asked to use his middle name in the organisation. Payne-Scott’s husband refused since his middle name “Holman” was the name of a man who had disgraced the Labor Party. So Betty Hall’s husband-to-be (William Phillip Hall) adopted his middle name and became “Phil Hall”. Betty’s children are Marion Bagot (born 10 February 1951), Susan Brian (born 9 June 1952), Janet Christiansen (born 9 April 1954), and Geoffrey Hall (born 12 April 1958).
- 21.
Betty and Phil Hall left the Party in 1956, after the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
- 22.
Much of Bolton’s solar noise work on the circular polarisation of bursts and outbursts was in fact later published by Pawsey in his review paper of 1950a (see Appendix E). See footnote 13, Chap. 8.
- 23.
The Cygnus A “radio star” had been detected on 17 June 1947 and additional observations were made in July, August and September. During this period, Virgo A (although then called Coma Berenices A) and Centaurus A were also discovered.
- 24.
This book went through five editions from 1931 to 1962 and was later reprinted in 1965 and 1971.
- 25.
Doris Fitton ran the Independent Theatre from 1939 to 1977, at 269 Miller Street, North Sydney.
- 26.
Slee has reported (1994) that the chemical toilet “needed our frequent attention”; it was necessary to construct ditches to channel the rain water away from the block-house as well as to plant grass to stabilise the sandy soil. On another occasion, the men at Dover Heights were highly amused by Payne-Scott’s inexperience in applying paint to an old desk at the field station. In that era, oil paint had to be thoroughly mixed before application, with the carrier (e.g., linseed oil) being well distributed throughout the paint. Payne-Scott forgot to mix the paint and cheerfully applied it in an unmixed fashion. She was not allowed to forget this oversight; and was subsequently accused of being “impractical”. This trait was not, however, evident in her maintenance of the radio equipment.
- 27.
Practical jokes had also been played on Payne-Scott during the War; her work-issued mat (foot rest) and radiator would be “stolen” on cold winter days, probably in retaliation for her aggressive attitude to women’s issues.
- 28.
Based on a recorded statement of 17 min’ duration on 17 February 1999, an interview in August 2003, and letters from Lyn Brown and Fred Brown (27 November 2007 and 4 December 2007).
- 29.
D.H. Briggs (1893–1987) was Head of Physics at the NSL (1939–1945), and later Chief of the Division of Physics (1945–1958). His wife was Edna Sayce, the first woman to graduate with a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Sydney in 1917.
- 30.
In Brown’s 1970 bibliography of Marjorie Barnard’s written works, she elaborates on Barnard’s turn of phrase: “Marjorie Barnard said once that what we Arts graduates were doing at CSIRO was ‘a sort of housekeeping for scientists’. I would say that her brand of housekeeping came closer to homemaking.” Brown (2001) has published a collection of poems; in several of these poems Marjorie Barnard is mentioned.
- 31.
On 18 September 1947 a meeting was held at RPL, consisting of Pawsey, Kerr, McCready, and Smerd with Arthur Higgs (Divisional Secretary) as the Chair, to discuss with Barnard and Brown how to organise the vast amount of new material on “solar noise” in the NS/RPL library. A complex system with a card index was instigated: NAA: C3830, A1/1/1, Part 2.
- 32.
Frederick Charles Brown worked at the CSIRO Division of Electrotechnology and later at NSL after its move from the University of Sydney to Lindfield, NSW. He retired in 1980 after 39 years in the CSIRO; he had known Payne-Scott at AWA in the pre War years.
- 33.
Like Payne-Scott, Brown returned to teaching in the 1960s; she taught French and German at Bankstown Girls’ High School for about 2 years and in 1968 transferred to St. George’s Technical College (as Payne-Scott had earlier) as a French teacher. She finished her career as a teacher of French in an adult education programme in Oatley.
References
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Bolton JG, Westfold KC (1950a) Galactic radiation at radio frequencies. I. 100 Mc/s. survey. Aust J Sci Res (A) 3:19
Brown L (2001) Fire and water. Collection of poems. Privately published by Lyn Brown, Sydney
Christiansen WN, Yabsley DE, Mills BY (1949) Measurements of solar radiation at a wavelength of 50 centimetres during the eclipse of November 1, 1948. Aust J Sci Res (A) 2:506
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(2010). Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Ruby Payne-Scott as Told by Friends and Colleagues. In: Goss, W.M., McGee, R.X. (eds) Under the Radar. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 363. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03141-0_11
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