The Directors - 1960s to 1990s
S.C.B. (Ben) Gascoigne, Acting Director 1966
Sidney Charles Bartholomew Gascoigne, known as Ben, was born in New Zealand in 1915 and earned a BSc at the University College of Auckland and PhD at the University of Bristol, before joining the optical munitions team at Mount Stromlo Observatory in 1941. A year later, he became heavily involved in the Commonwealth Time Service, which was transferred to Mount Stromlo Observatory.
After the war Gascoigne focused on astronomical research, particularly stellar evolution, the scale used to measure distance and faint star photometry, and the study of the Magellanic Clouds.
Gascoigne was among the team responsible for establishing the new observatory at Siding Spring near Coonabarabran. In 1963, he developed an optical corrector plate to enhance the new 40-inch Telescope at Siding Spring and one of his most important achievements was his work in establishing the Anglo-Australian Telescope there in the 1970s.
Gascoigne was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1966. He was the inaugural Vice-President of the Astronomical Society of Australia, which he helped to establish, and the first Australian elected as an Associate of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was honoured with an Order of Australia in 1996 for his service to Australian astronomy.
Gascoigne was keenly interested in history and in retirement he spent much of his time writing about the history of astronomy in Australia. He also assisted his wife, the artist Rosalie Gascoigne, with cataloguing her work. He died in Canberra in 2010.
Olin Eggen, Director 1966-1977
Born in the United States in 1919, Eggen worked for the US Military before gaining his PhD in astronomy and joining California’s Lick Observatory.
In 1956 he was appointed Chief Assistant Astronomer at Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) and was Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society. He undertook a staggering number of observation hours and many administrative responsibilities, as well as researching the history of astronomy.
In 1961 Eggen joined Mount Wilson Observatory and stayed there until 1966, when he was offered the Director’s role at Stromlo. He spent the next eleven years there.
Eggen was described as a ‘scientific nomad’ who loved “a life on the dome floor, in the dark” (ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2017). Under his leadership, several talented astronomers joined Stromlo, including Mike Bessell, Don Faulkner and John Norris, and the number of published papers more than doubled. Eggen personally authored 99 papers during his 11-year directorship.
Eggen’s tenure was soured by negotiations involving the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring. He vehemently argued that ANU should have sole control of the telescope’s research program, but he lost this battle, and a rift developed between Stromlo and the rest of Australian astronomy.
Eggen resigned in 1977 and accepted a position as an astronomer at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where he remained for 21 years. He remained interested in Stromlo and continued to return to the Observatory for a month every year until his death in 1998.
Donald Mathewson, Acting Director 1977-1979, Director 1979-1986
Donald (Don) Mathewson was Mount Stromlo Observatory’s fifth Director and its first Australian Director since Walter Duffield in the 1920s. He began his career in radio astronomy at the CSIRO in 1955, before completing his PhD at the University of Manchester. In 1966 he accepted a fellowship at ANU and commenced work at Stromlo.
In 1974, Mathewson made a significant discovery – a huge arc of gas 120 degrees wide (corresponding to 600,000 light years), going across the sky from the Magellanic Cloud, which Mathewson named the Magellanic Stream (ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2017).
When Stromlo Director Olin Eggen resigned in 1977, Mathewson was appointed Acting Director. In 1979 he was appointed Director, and he continued to focus on building the reputation of the Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories. Research focused on the evolution of stars and the determination of the Hubble Constant. Mathewson conducted radio and spectroscopic studies of 2,500 spiral galaxies while at Stromlo, as well as publishing an impressive number of papers. Between 1977 and 1985 he produced between 43 and 92 technical papers each year (A&G Reviews, 2004).
Colleague Dr. Ragbir Bathal described Mathewson as “very Australian, energetic, approachable, decisive, a great bustler-around . . . Don was largely responsible for taking Australia into the Space Age.” (ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2017).
Mathewson completed his directorship in 1986 and returned to his research of spiral galaxies.
Alexander Rodgers, Acting Director 1986-1987, Director 1987-1992
Alexander (Alex) Rodgers was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1932 and graduated with honours in astronomy from the University of Sydney. He won a scholarship to ANU and completed his doctorate in 1958, mentored by Stromlo Director Richard van der Reit Woolley. Rodgers then spent three years as a Carnegie Research Fellow at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories in California and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Greenwich Observatory before returning to Stromlo in the 1960s.
Rodgers was appointed as Stromlo’s sixth Director in 1987. His passion for engineering influenced his Directorship and he argued that Stromlo’s engineering capability was a vital part of its identity and its future role (ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2017). He was responsible for the Observatories' instrumentation for most of his career and focused on developing new instrumentation. His first instrument project was building a spectrophotometer for the 50-inch telescope in the late 1960s, but his favourite instrument was the 74-inch Telescope, which was Australia's major spectroscopic research tool until the 2.3m Telescope at Siding Spring in the 1970s (Freeman, 1997).
Rodgers’ most significant contribution was his involvement in the MACHO project – an international search for ‘dark matter’, a project that was widely acclaimed.
After completing his directorship in 1992, Rodgers stayed at ANU and continued his research on variable stars, as well as serving on the ANU Council. He died in 1997, just a few weeks before his scheduled retirement.
Jeremy Mould, Director 1993-2001
Following an 18-month recruitment period during which Don Faulkner served as Acting Director, Jeremy Mould was appointed Director in 1993. Mould completed his PhD at ANU in 1975 before undertaking several research fellowships in the United States and serving as assistant astronomer at Kitt Peak National Observatory and a faculty member at the California Institute of Technology.
Mould brought a fresh approach to Stromlo and Siding Spring’s programs and subscribed to the philosophy of ‘Big Science’. Working with Wendy Freedman, Mould solved the problem of the age of the universe, and under his Directorship Matthew Colless produced the largest map of the galaxies in the universe and Brian Schmidt made his outstanding discovery that the universe is accelerating (Bhathal, 2013).
In 2001 Mould left ANU to become Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in the United States, a role he held until 2007, when he returned to Australia.
Mould’s honours include the Newton Lacey Pierce Prize in Astronomy (1984) by the American Astronomical Society and the Oort Professorship (1998) by Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Australian Academy of Science.
Mould is currently an Emeritus Professor and Chief Investigator at the Centre for Dark Matter and Particle Physics at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, where he has also played a pivotal role in setting up the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.
