Colin Pask

Colin Pask - A Little Personal History

I was born in Great Gonerby, a little village just outside the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, England. My father was a dairy farmer and I grew up interested in the countryside and farming (but there was already an older brother to take over the farming business!) At age 11 I started at the King's School in Grantham following in the footsteps of Sir Isaac Newton, who was born (rather earlier) in the village of Woolsthorpe, also just outside Grantham.

I had developed a great interest in natural history and especially ornithology, an interest that remains strong today, and probably I should have had a career in biology. However, little biology, especially at the higher levels, was done at the King's School presumably because it was a boys school! On the other hand the grammar school for girls had more biology and less physics. (That school too has had its notable pupils: Margaret Thatcher and more importantly Johanna, who became my wife.)

So my final years at school were devoted to studying Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Physics, plus German and and other odd bits and pieces. Then it was off to the University of London where I entered Queen Mary College's physics program with an emphasis on theoretical physics and mathematics.

I then decided to come to Australia! People at Queen Mary College said I was insane - nobody goes to Australia. However, they relented when I told them I was coming to work with Professor John M. Blatt. (His 1952 book with Victor Weisskopf, "Theoretical Nuclear Physics" was the bible in that subject and was even reprinted in 1979, and he was also famous for work on superconductivity.) So it was that Johanna and I sailed for Australia late in 1964.

I gained my PhD from the University of New South Wales and after a brief time at Duke University I became a lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics at UNSW. Some of my first lectures were in numerical analysis, classical dynamics and fortran programming. We loved the life in Sydney and our children Melanie and Daniel were born there.

In 1971 I took up a Queen Elizabeth Fellowship in the just established Department of Applied Mathematics in the Research School of Physical Sciences at ANU. I stayed on there in the Institute of Advanced Studies as a Fellow and progressed to Senior Fellow in 1978. My research interests developed in optics and vision (into biology at last!), especially in waveguide theory and fibre optics, with various offshoots into coherence theory and things like numerical analysis and nonlinear classical dynamics. The whole family enjoyed a stay in Germany while I was on leave to work on insect vision at the Max Planck Institute in Tubingen.

Also during that time the family completed undergraduate degrees: Johanna - honours in Prehistory and Geography, Melanie - Education, primary school teaching, Daniel - Communications-Journalism. I got to proof-read a lot of very interesting essays!

In 1986 I became Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics (later the School of Mathematics and Statistics) in University College, that part of the University of New South Wales in the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. So once again I work for UNSW and get to interact with undergraduate students, which I greatly enjoy after spending so (too?) long in a purely research environment. In 2000 I became Presiding Member of the University College Academic Board. The Head or Dean of the whole University College is called the Rector and I also did a stint as Deputy Rector.

I have now published over 140 research papers in international journals in physics, biology, optical engineering and mathematics. I have enjoyed giving lectures on many topics, ranging from introductory mathematics for first year undergraduate students to specialist lectures to selected international post-doctoral students at a NATO Summer School. Supervising many post-graduate students has been a great pleasure.

I gave up being Head of School after 12 years to concentrate more on some things Professors like to do - research, teach and write. Who knows, I may even get to play more croquet, a game Johanna and I took up a few years ago. (And which involves lots of challenging classical dynamics!) Also a few years ago we moved from our family home in Canberra to build a smaller house on the edge of the bush adjoining Queanbeyan so once again I can enjoy natural surroundings every day. Daniel lives in Canberra. Melanie, husband Peter and daughters Aysha and Mia live in Sydney. We share our house with a cocker spaniel and our bushland with a little mob of kangaroos, a wombat or two, several possums, many kinds of birds, numerous lizards and the occasional brown snake.

I "retired" at the end of 2007 so now I can work on just the things I want to do, like writing some books!

work address: School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences

University of New South Wales @ ADFA

Australian Defence Force Academy

Canberra, ACT 2601

email: c.pask@adfa.edu.au