Some Notable Staff
Clabon (Cla) Walter Allen
Clabon Allen was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1904. After graduating from the University of Western Australia, he became one of the first staff members at the new Commonwealth Solar Observatory in 1926, when it was temporarily housed at Hotel Canberra (later the Hyatt Hotel).
Allen was widely celebrated for his photometric study of the Sun, the most accurate and comprehensive study at the time. He was recognised as an international authority on the Sun and his study of its disturbances in the 1940s was essential to overcoming radio communications issues during the Second World War. In 1936 he was awarded a fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Following the Second World War, Allen worked closely with Joseph Pawsey and the CSIRO Radiophysics Division while also beginning observations of emission nebulae at Stromlo, the latter leading to his research student Colin Gum discovering the Gum Nebula.
In 1951 Allen was appointed Perren Professor of Astronomy at University College, London, and Director of the University of London Observatory at Mill Hill. While there he published the first edition of Astrophysical Quantities, a compilation of numerical data of astrophysical interest. Universally known as AQ, it is the most quoted book on the subject (Gascoigne, 2007).
In 1972 Allen retired and returned to Canberra. He was an active member of the local community, particularly St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Forrest. He died on 11 December 1987, survived by his wife Rose and five sons.
Kurt Gottlieb
Kurt Gottlieb was born in Austria in 1910 and completed qualifications in engineering before leaving Europe as a refugee in 1940. Unfortunately, his qualifications were not recognised in Australia, so he took odd jobs while completing a draftsman’s course in Sydney.
In 1941 Mount Stromlo Observatory Director Richard van der Reit Woolley recruited Gottlieb to work on the mechanical design of optical munitions, which had become the primary focus of the Observatory during the Second World War. Gottlieb worked on the design of eleven different instruments for the military.
After the end of the war Gottlieb stayed on at Stromlo as a research engineer and astronomer and was appointed a fellow of the University’s Research School of Physical Sciences.
To support the Observatory’s focus on stellar astronomy, Gottlieb worked tirelessly on the refurbishment of some of the older telescopes, particularly the Great Melbourne Telescope (50-inch Telescope), ensuring they were usable or many years in the future.
One of Gottleb’s notable achievements was being the first person to photograph the trail in the sky of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite.
Gottlieb spent the rest of his career at Stromlo before retiring in 1976. He died in Sydney on 21 July 1995.
Kenneth (Ken) Freeman
Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1940, Freeman studied mathematics at the University of Western Australia and theoretical astrophysics at the University of Cambridge before taking up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas and research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He then returned to Australia in 1967 to take up a Queen Elizabeth Fellowship at Mount Stromlo Observatory and has spent almost his entire career at ANU since then.
His research focuses on the formation and dynamics of galaxies and globular clusters, particularly dark matter in galaxies. In 1970 he became one of the first to conclude that spiral galaxies contain a large fraction of dark matter. More recently, his work has focused on the formation and dynamics of the Milky Way. He has published 530 refereed research papers and reviews, with 49,000 citations. He has always actively supported graduate students and has supervised 62 PhD students throughout his career.
His numerous awards include the Australian Academy of Science’s Pawsey Medal and Matthew Flinders Medal; American Institute of Physics and the American Astronomical Society’s Dannie Heineman Prize and Henry Norris Russell Lectureship; Australian Prime Minister's Science Prize; and the Gruber Cosmology Prize. He is Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Royal Society of London; an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences; Companion of the Order of Australia; and Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.
Freeman is currently Duffield Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at the Australian National University.
Brian Schmidt
Brian Schmidt was born in Montana, USA in 1967 and graduated from the University of Arizona before completing his PhD at Harvard University and undertaking research at the Harvard & Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. In 1995 he commenced as a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University.
At Stromlo Schmidt led the High-Z Supernova Search Team, researching the deceleration of the universe. By studying the brightness and measuring the redshift of supernovae, the team discovered the universe is accelerating, which they attributed to dark energy. This ground-breaking discovery saw Schmidt, Adam Reiss and Saul Perlmutter awarded the Shaw Prize (2006), Gruber Cosmology Prize (2007) and Nobel Prize in Physics (2011).
More recently Schmidt has led the SkyMapper Project and Southern Sky Survey, creating a unique digital survey of the southern sky and producing a massively detailed record of nearly a billion stars and galaxies.
Schmidt’s awards include the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Achievement in the Physical Sciences, Harvard University’s Bok Prize, the Australian Academy of Science’s Pawsey Medal, and the Astronomical Society of India’s Vainu Bappu Medal. In 2009 he was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship and in 2013 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, The United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.
In 2016 Schmidt became Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, a role in held until 2023. He has since returned to his research at the ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
