Interview with Noel Dunbar - physicist and university administrator

Notes from a friendly interrogation, by Albert Caton, December 2010 at Professor Dunbar’s home
Synopsis written by Albert Caton

Editor’s note – no audio recording of this interview was made; Albert Caton instead prepared detailed notes from his interview with Professor Dunbar, which was structured according to guidelines used in previous interviews in this Emeritus Faculty series.

Biographical introduction: Noel Dunbar joined the Canberra University College from Melbourne University in 1959, as Professor of Physics.  The College became the School of General Studies in 1960, when the Institute of Advanced Studies (which then constituted the Australian National University) merged with the College.  In 1968 Professor Dunbar was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor of ANU, which he then spent with frequent interludes as Acting Vice Chancellor.  In 1977, Professor Dunbar was appointed Chair of the Australian Universities Council, a position he held until his retirement in 1987.  He continued to chair the Churchill Fellowships selection committee for some years after.  Noel Dunbar died in Canberra in April 2011.

Interview Synopsis: David Noel Ferguson Dunbar, an only child, was born on Christmas Day1922 in Onehunga, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand – and named ‘Noel’ for obvious reasons.   Noel remained a New Zealand citizen (albeit having held and travelled on an Australian Official Passport for many years).

Noel’s father Henry worked as a storeman in the New Zealand railways and his mother Elenor (nee Boddington) was a dressmaker.  The family moved to Dunedin in New Zealand’s South Island to accommodate Noel’s poor health.   Noel’s father died from a heart attack in 1932, when Noel was 10 years old.  In consequence, life was difficult for Noel and his mother during his teenage years.

Noel attended St Clair’s Primary School where he finished as dux of the school.   He was a foundation pupil of Kings High School – a new public high school in Dunedin – and was dux of that school too, matriculating in 1939.  He excelled not only at academic pursuits at Kings but also played cricket for the school as its wicket keeper.

From high school, Noel won an undergraduate scholarship to Otago University in Dunedin.  His BSc and MSc degrees were conferred by the University of New Zealand (Otago University was at that time a college of UNZ).  Noel served in the army during World War 2, though he did not see overseas service.

In 1949, the final year of his MSc, Noel won a PhD scholarship to the University of Bristol in Wales, but in the absence of notification of that fact, joined the University of Melbourne as a temporary lecturer in physics.   His mother, 67 at the time, accompanied him.   They were to travel to Australia but the ship ran aground in Wellington Harbour as it set out, so they travelled instead by Sunderland flying boat from Auckland to Rose Bay in Sydney, finishing their journey to Melbourne by conventional (DC4) aircraft.

In Melbourne, Noel completed a PhD in physics, studying nuclear collisions.   From 1952 to 1953 he was a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at Caltech in the USA, undertaking work on low-energy-collision nuclear physics.   He returned to Melbourne in 1953 as a Senior Lecturer in Physics, where his research continued to focus on nuclear-particle collisions.  He was involved in the construction of and research with the Physics Department’s two Van de Graff generators.

In 1959 Noel was appointed Professor of Physics at Canberra University College, which was then still administered by Melbourne University.   In 1960 the college and the Australian National University merged.   Noel was one of the merged university’s six new science professors in undergraduate studies, which  included David Brown (geology), Arthur Hambly (chemistry), Lindsay Pryor (botany) and Desmond Smyth (zoology).   Cec Gibb (psychology – in those days the University of Melbourne required a science subject within their degree course – psychology was a popular option among non-science students) was already at the college.

In 1968 Noel, interested more in academic administration and management than research or teaching, was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor of ANU, a role he occupied until he left the university in 1977 (as acting Vice-Chancellor at that time) to Chair the federal government’s Australian Universities Council.  On retirement from that council (in 1987) he continued to chair the selection committee for Churchill Fellowships, finally retiring permanently in 19??.  Post-retirement, he concentrated his interests on travel and epicurianism (and the camaraderie that accompanies such pursuits).

Early times at the Australian National University

When Noel and his mother arrived in Canberra in 1959 they were housed in a third floor apartment in the Northbourne Flats, an address sought after in those days.   Sir Garfield Barwick, Attorney General in the Menzies government, was a fellow resident.   After Noel’s mother died in 1986 (aged 104), he lived on alone in the flats (he never married) until 2004 when, somewhat frail and with renovation of the flats scheduled, he moved to a ground-floor apartment in Turner.

Since Canberra University College was part of the University of Melbourne, the college was in effect a ‘traditional’ university, with undergraduate teaching and postgraduate research functions.

In contrast, the Australian National University in its original form, established by Parliament in 1946, was solely a postgraduate research university.  The legislation establishing ANU (drafted by Ross Hohnen – who later became Registrar and, subsequently for many years, Secretary of the university, and John Nimmo) specified a (substantial) grant of finance that could not be diverted for other purposes.  The five inaugural research schools – known together as the Institute of Advanced Studies – were: Physical Sciences (Mark Oliphant, nuclear physicist and Director from the outset); Social Sciences (Keith Hancock, historian, provided advice from Oxford until his arrival in 1957 to become the first Director); Pacific Studies (Charles? Firth, anthropologist, provided advice from London, but John Crawford, economist, became the first Director in 1960); and the John Curtin School of Medical Research (Howard Florey, in Oxford, provided advice, but it was not until 1967 that Frank Fenner, microbiologist, was appointed the first Director).

Noel took on the professorial role at Canberra University College at a time when he and many others expected that it would become the University of Canberra, and exist independently of ANU.   Sir Robert Menzies, concerned that Canberra was too small to support two universities, decided that the college and the Australian National University should merge, a decision not popular with the original ANU creators and their staff.   Menzies was not particular about how the establishment should be set up and governed, with one proviso – that there be a single library.

The proposal to merge the two institutions generated protracted and sometimes bitter discussions, with each preferring to maintain their autonomy.   At the merger, the college component became known as the School of General Studies and would include arts, Asian studies, law, and economics, as well as science.   Later, the School would become known as The Faculties, effectively with the same functions as a state university.   The Institute of Advanced Studies soon expanded to include research schools of chemistry, biological sciences, and earth sciences.  The first Vice-Chancellor of the amalgamated university was Len Huxley (succeeding the original Australian National University’s Leslie Melville).

At Canberra University College, Noel Dunbar had chaired the staff association.  The original Australian National University had no interest in staff associations.  However, on amalgamation Noel was appointed chair of a combined staff association (in his words ‘a rare concession by the original establishment to the new undergraduate component’).   After amalgamation, Noel was required to involve himself in salary negotiations with the federal government’s Academic Salaries Tribunal (then Sir Richard Eggleton), leaving Arthur Hambly to champion academic issues in the new ANU.

When Noel had been in Melbourne the Australian National University was envied – ‘the pet university of the Federal Government, and had more money than it knew what to do with’.   While immediately post amalgamation this continued to be true, Noel and his academic colleagues would witness a steady erosion of resources so that by the time of his departure from ANU, there was little of the favourite ‘pet’ image remaining.     

HC ‘Nugget’ Coombs was Chair of the Australian National University Council, a role that in state universities would equate to Chancellor.   ANU soon adopted the Chancellor title, and over the early decades appointed eminent scholars from abroad to this role.   Examples included the eminent Australian medical scientist Howard Florey; and, probably on the recommendation of Mark Oliphant, Sir John Cockcroft (Professor of Physics at Cambridge, and one of Lord Rutherford’s protégés).  ANU Chancellors would typically visit their university about once a year, the role titular rather than functional.

Noel often found research administration frustrating.  As Professor of Physics and Dean of the Faculty of Science, he was responsible for overseeing both undergraduate teaching and postgraduate research functions (as in state universities).  Given that the greater part of postgraduate research in physics at ANU was undertaken within the Institute of Advanced Studies, he saw a need for collaboration.   Oliphant, on the other hand (though without any over-arching right of control on the direction of physics research at the university), sought to specify research directions for both parts of ANU.   Interestingly, Ernest Titterton, one of the professors in the Research School, worked independently, showing no interest in the research of the Physics Department in the School of General Studies.

Noel describes undergraduate teaching in his department as ‘the usual’.   Highlights of its research work he counted as the shock-wave work (see below) and his encouragement of and the provision of facilities for Mike Gore who, with a great interest in teaching, undertook ‘research into teaching’.   Mike would later establish in the Canberra parliamentary triangle the national science demonstration centre known as Questacon.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Australian Universities Council roles

Len Huxley’s successor as Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University was John Crawford.   Crawford had two choices for deputy – Noel Dunbar or Colin Courtice (a medical scientist from the John Curtin School of Medical Research) – and ultimately selected Noel as his appointee.   Asked to explain his role, Noel said that in essence his function was to say ‘No’ when the Vice-Chancellor had not said ‘Yes’ (and so Noel would recommend against it as a vocation).   He was also required to act as Vice-Chancellor during Crawford’s (frequent) absences overseas.

In 1977, after nine years as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Noel was appointed Chair of the Australian Universities Council (previously known as the Australian Universities Commission).  The Universities Council was one of the three councils that constituted the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, under the chairmanship of Peter Karmel (the distinguished educational economist).   The new, enlarged commission was an initiative of John Carrick – the Fraser government’s Minister for Education at the time – largely because of his dissatisfaction with the lobbying and activism of the Universities Commission at a time when the federal government was reducing universities funding.

The Tertiary Education Commission provided an interface between universities, colleges of advanced education, and technical and further education colleges on the one hand, and the Minister.  As an independent commission it made its recommendations directly to Parliament – recommendations that in general the government of those days would not support because of its attitude towards universities.   Ultimately the  commission (and Noel’s place in it) was abolished and replaced by a Ministerial Committee that reported to the Minister rather than directly to Parliament, giving the Minister power of veto.

Noel Dunbar’s research

During his professorial tenure at ANU, Noel was best known for studies on high-velocity flow.  Together with Ray Stalker (University of Queensland) and John Sandeman (Noel’s colleague at ANU), the team designed and built wind flow tunnels for analysis of shock waves in vacuums – studies relevant to wave flow in interstellar space.

Noel muses that his administrative responsibilities as Professor of Physics at ANU ended his career in nuclear physics.  ‘But in any case I wasn’t going to make a brilliant nuclear physics researcher’, he notes, feeling that he was better suited to a career in administration.  In particular, he recalled the life-style of researchers at Caltech - working intensively day and night.   Life, he thought, had better options on offer.
Despite his self-deprecating comments about his nuclear physics research, part of his work at Caltech has been described by Ray Spear (a research fellow who worked with Titterton) as perhaps the most important in nuclear physics by an Australian (albeit a New Zealander!).   The studies showed that a particular energy level could exist in carbon-12.   This was important because it had been predicted by ‘that mad Yorkshireman [Professor] Fred Hoyle’ who had asked the Caltech workers to look for such a level. Noel and his colleagues, though busy on other issues, scheduled a week’s work for Hoyle using a Van de Graff generator, and found that such a level indeed existed.  ‘This was vital for Fred’s theory of how elements were built up in the sun (from hydrogen).   In the sun it is so hot that the atoms are excited, stripped of electrons, and combine to make heavier elements.  Energy levels provide the resonances for the creation.  It is a step-by-step one, and our work showed that one of the earlier steps was feasible.  The process is the accepted theory for how all elements are created in the sun.’

Turning points while at the Australian National University

Noel felt that as Professor of Physics his main contribution had been the recruitment of the team for the shock-tube laboratory because of the great significance of their work.  He had also been instrumental in finding the finances for purchase of the Mach–Zender interferometer, a tool fundamental for measurements in the shock-wave tube.  It was expensive but indispensable, and led to results that established an international reputation for the laboratory; Stalker and Sandeman became recognised as world experts in the field.

Another important event for Noel was as Acting Vice-Chancellor, signing the agreement between the Edith and Joy London Foundation and ANU, which transferred the Kioloa farming property (on the NSW south coast) from Joy and Edith London to ANU to become the important teaching and research field facility well known these days to many ANU students and staff.

An action of Noel’s that attracted the great interest of the press was his decision to summon the police to clear a student protest that, inter alia, was occupying the university’s main telephone switchboard in 1969.   At the time, the Research School of Physics was undertaking experiments using Oliphant’s homopolar generator, which required highly hazardous liquid sodium as an electrical conductor.  Concerned that the maintenance of communication at all times was essential in such a dangerous experiment, Noel decided that the students’ occupation of the switchboard could not be permitted to continue.

Noel counts as personal milestones his appointment as Deputy Vice-Chancellor; his frequent role acting as Vice Chancellor; and, his appointment as Chair of the Australian Tertiary Education Council.

Turning points for the Australian National University

At the institutional level, Noel sees the merging of the research-only IAS and the Melbourne University Canberra college as a somewhat regrettable milestone in the evolution of what is today the Australian National University.   As a consequence, the Australian National University these days has come to look like any other state university rather than a national centre of research excellence, having lost the unique standing of the original Institute of Advanced Studies.   It has also lost the financial advantages of that original and unique institution.

While the best of the university’s research is as great as ever (contributions by exemplars like Frank Fenner – and, yes, Oliphant too – have ensured that), it has lost the attributes of excellence that existed under Crawford’s reign.  Sadly, in Noel Dunbar’s view, the research schools are no longer unique, having almost been buried and transformed under successive structural changes.

Outstanding people at the Australian National University

In Noel’s opinion, the best scholars at the university were the best in Australia.  Specifically he cites Frank Fenner, John Crawford, Perce Partridge, Arthur Birch, David Craig and David Catcheside.   Noel’s own mentors include John Crawford who appointed him as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Sir Lesley Martin, who had been Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne, adviser to the government on nuclear-weapons research, and Chair of the Australian Universities Commission.

Cross-disciplinary activities at the Australian National University

The Institute’s research schools were rather insular.   Cross-disciplinary activities both among them, and with The Faculties, was virtually non-existent despite the efforts and frequent discussions between directors and deans.   Such meetings often became an excuse for argument rather than constructive exchange.  Chemistry and the social sciences were exceptions, with beneficial links between Institute and Faculty departments.  There were no comparable cognate connections for medical sciences or Pacific studies.

University House under its first Master, Dale Trendall, made major contributions to the cultural and social life of the university.   Trendall, a classics scholar of international standing, was intelligent, with a quirky sense of humour – it was he who suggested that the Lake Burley Griffin police launch be named Platypus.

Apart from Oliphant’s desire to maintain control of physics research for both the Institute and The Faculties, the parts of the university generally meshed together well, even if under the surface there was a good deal of contention.   And when Sir John Crawford was away and Noel acted as Vice Chancellor, there was no interference because in a sense Noel was the university.

In hindsight

The most important thing a university can do is to appoint a capable Vice Chancellor.   Peter Karmel was one, as was John Crawford – unfortunately Chubb, Huxley and Nicholl have been less successful choices in Noel’s view.  The role needs a person with an acute awareness of the academia–government interface; someone who knows their way around government (in order to get the necessary finances), but who also understands academics.

Noel’s advice to scholars contemplating coming to the ANU?   Come: if you are any good at all, ANU is a good place to be!  However, if you aren’t all that good, go somewhere else.   Noel admits unapologetically to being elitist in this regard, though like the curate’s egg, ANU is better in some disciplines than in others.