MONELEC ALUMNI NEWS

Newsletter of Alumni of the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering,

Clayton Campus, Monash University

Issue 3

Editor : Sue Morgan 9905 3467 smm@basil.eng.monash.edu.au

October 1994

DEATH OF PROFESSOR LAMPARD

Professor Douglas Lampard died on 1 September after a short illness. He was 67. Over 200 people attended a memorial service on September 16 in the Religious Centre. The service was conducted by Gary Bouma, an Anglican minister and Associate Professor in Sociology. Robin Alfredson from Mechanical Engineering played the organ. Ten of Doug's jazz friends shared with us the music that he loved and fitting tributes were delivered by Bill Brown, Ken Hunt and Steve Redman. The text of these tributes is included in this newsletter, that you may reflect with us on the depth and breadth of Doug's contributions not only to the Department but to the many areas which benefited from his curiosity, enthusiasm and considerable intellect.

PROFESSOR GREG EGAN APPOINTED

Professor Greg Egan has been appointed to a chair in the Department.

He graduated in communications engineering from RMIT in 1975. He completed his MSc and PhD at the Victoria University of Manchester in the UK. In 1980 Greg joined RMIT, where he developed programs which emphasised an integrated approach to software and hardware implementation of computer research systems. This approach obviously motivated the several students who completed research programs under his direction. Greg was departmental head at RMIT for extended periods and acting dean of Engineering at Swinburne during 1992 and 1993. He has formed several research groups, the most notable being the joint RMIT/CSIRO Parallel Systems Architecture group and the Cray Research group, which promotes high performance computing in industry. In 1993 he was invited back to Manchester as visiting professor in the Centre for Novel Computing Systems.

Greg will take up his appointment on 1 November 1994. Bill Brown will continue as Head of Department in 1995, with Greg taking up this role in 1996.

ALUMNI DINNER

The Annual Dinner of the Society was held on Friday 22 July at the Staff Club. Many of the final year class of '67 took part and enlivened the whole evening. The guest speaker was Ian Wright (BE'65 PhD'71) now Chief Engineer of AMECON. He had some interesting stories to relate about the building of frigates for the Australian and New Zealand Navies. Bill Brown,President of the Society reported that the inaugural awards of the Douglas Lampard Electrical Engineering Research Medal has been made to Rick Alexander (BE'82 PhD'90) and Wang Xinhua (PhD'92). The committee was reelected unopposed.

EPRI PROJECT - CONTRACT SIGNED

A few months ago Bill Bonwick announced that negotiations about an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) project were underway. After a long and complicated process, the EPRI contract has now been signed and work has started. The project is on bubble formation in transformer insulation systems, the effect on insulation strength and the detection of bubble phenomena. Dr Valery Davydov has been appointed as the principal researcher for the project. Valery came to Australia from Russia over two years ago. In the USSR he worked at the Power Engineering Division, USSR Ministry of Power Engineering. Valery became an Australian citizen this month and we wish him a successful professional life in Australia.

This EPRI project is the first of its kind in Australia and a whole new process of EPRI managing an overseas contract is having to be developed. One of our graduates Matt Zema (BE'82) is strongly linked with the project as a (part-time) overseas representative for EPRI. Matt now has a senior position in PowerNet Victoria.

RDN CRC UNDERWAY (AT LAST!)

The Research Data Network Cooperative Research Centre (RDN-CRC) contract involving the Commonwealth Government and the Australian National University, Australian Vice Chancellors' Committee, CSIRO, Digital Equipment Corp, Fujitsu, Monash University, the Queensland Government, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Telstra, Distributed Systems Technology CRC and the University of Queensland, was finally signed on June 10, 1994 after 18 months of negotiations. The RDN-CRC will receive $13 million from the Commonwealth over 5 years although only $2.2 million of this will come to Monash. The first payment was recently received.

The main objective of the RDN-CRC is to undertake research, development and education in communications network technologies and applications, and to support network infrastructure development.

The Advanced Network Systems Performance and Applications Group (ANSPAG) of the RDN-CRC is based in the Department, and is an unincorporated collaborative joint venture between Monash University, Siemens Ltd and Telstra (Telecom Australia). ANSPAG will receive $1.6 million from the RDN-CRC over 5 years for research activities, and an additional $0.6 million for wide area network facilities. The total resources of the group - cash and in-kind are approximately $5 million spread over 5 years, with the additional contributions coming from Monash and industry.

The ANSPAG group recently took on the role of overall liaison for the RDN-CRC, and coordinates the reporting of financial and research progress to the Commonwealth.

Fred Symons is Director of ANSPAG, Bruce Tonkin is Deputy Director, and acting Director while Fred is on study leave in the UK. Tony Newstead, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Management, is the Chairman of the ANSPAG Board of Management. Philip Branch has joined us from the University of Tasmania as a research engineer, and Paul Richardson has joined the group half time as a Siemens in-kind contribution. Rosemary Bull has been appointed as Admin. Officer. Kevin Dillon is also working with the group as part of the original Telecom/Monash/ACCI project. Further staff appointments will be made later this year.

NEWS OF STAFF

Congratulations to :

Kim Ng who has been made a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE).

Wlad Mielczarski who has been made a Senior Member of IEEE.

Easin and Nina Khan on the birth of their daughter Nadia (sister to Muntasir) on 11 August, Lindsay and Louise Kleeman on the birth to Jeremy's brother Nicholas Jonathan on 5th May, Geoff and Robyn Binns on the birth of Adam Geoffrey on 26th May and Kemal & Sally Ajay on the birth of their third daughter.

Andrew McIver and Linda Penington (comp. sci. post grad) on their marriage on April 16.

Alan Lipton who with two friends from the Maths Department (Robin Humble and Nick Fitton) took out the much coveted Silicon Graphics Inc.(SGI) IndyZone applications championship (Network Game Division). This competition based in the USA has been running for 3 years now and this is the first time it had been won by a non-yank. The prize is a SGI INDY, named credit at SIGGRAPH, and their game appears on the new SGI 'best of' CD. The game itself (for those interested) is based on the movie TRON. It is a 3D version of Lightcycles.

Les Jones from the workshop decided to retire, finishing up on 13th May. Les has been with the department for 4.5 years and his happy face will be missed.

Maddie Mamouney is off to Britain for a working holiday. She has been with us since 1986, when she commenced straight out of school, and we will miss her also.

ALUMNI NEWS

Sonja Ahrens (BScBE'92, now with Siemens) and James Kershaw (BScBE'92, and now a Masters student in the department) were married on 1st October after nearly three years of engagement.

Steve Blanch (BE'69 MEngSc'73) has been appointed CEO of "Distribution Business East" resulting from the break-up of SECV.

Les Williams (brother of A.J. Williams who died three years ago) died in May 94 and has left about $1 million to Monash Physics Dept to set up a lab for quantum electrical measurements and for the study of quantum electrical techniques. Les Williams was awarded an honorary Masters Degree for his contributions to the development of scientific instruments such as potentiometers, bridges etc. A final year project and vacation employment projects were taken by students with the Williams brothers. David Atkinson (BE'76) worked with them.

Peter Evans (BE'92) is working for In-Mar-Tech on computer graphics for the TAC's mid-range driving simulator, now being marketed in the USA and Europe. Peter is engaged to marry one of the Mechanical.Engineers. - Amanda (Mandi) Greenwood

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Thank you for the illustrious reference in the second issue of the Alumni News. I thought that it may be of benefit to those readers unfamiliar with the Faculty's Industry Scholarship Scheme to briefly explain the program and Email Electronic's support of it.

Co-operative Education Scholarships

Sponsoring companies pay an annual contribution to the Scholarship fund of approximately $10,000 per year, CPI indexed.

The total pool of funds is divided up and paid out as two forms of scholarship to qualifying students. $3,300 per year (tax free) to 'Dean's Scholarships' and $10,000 per year (CPI indexed) for 5 years to 'Industry Scholarships'. In return for their sponsorship funds, the company gets 'employment' of scholarship students at their own works for an aggregate of 18 months over 3 years.

'Employment' blocks are most ideally suited to

* 3 months (Summer vacation)

* 6 months (1/2 year) or 9 months (+ vacation)

* 12 months or 15 months

The particular engineering skills sought by a company can be tailored on a block by block basis, depending on the availability of eligible scholarship holders at the time.

Email Electronics has been a supporter of the Co-operative Education Scholarship program since 1990. There are many tangible and altruistic justifications for supporting such a program, however, on a purely commercial assessment I believe that we have received value for money with a net positive contribution from the students employed. Even when the considerable on costs associated with the necessary on job training, supervision and skills loss at the end of each period are taken into account.

The return that we are reaping now has increased as the program matures giving access to later year students and for longer continuous employment blocks.

On a more personal note, I am pleased to be able to maintain my association with Monash via Email Electronics support of the Dean's Scholarship Program.

Those readers unfamiliar with the program would be best advised to contact the Dean's office for complete details.

Regards,

Gary Lyons

Manufacturing Manager,

Email Electronics
Rick Harvey [BE'85], after just over a year at Telecom, joined the National Protocol Support Centre where he was involved in the promotion of international standards for computer communications. This covered consulting, industry presentations, OSI education and various projects including the development of conformance test tools at the National Computing Centre (UK). When the NPSC closed in 1988, he moved to Datacraft where he is now the Project Leader of the Open Systems Software Group. He is responsible for developing communications software and is the principle architect of Datacraft's X.500 electronic directory system which has world wide patents pending. His main expertise is in software engineering and distributed information systems. He and wife Helen currently have no plans for a family (despite the rumours!).

Allan Anderson [BScBE'85), after a brief start at Telecom, became the chief design engineer at FutureTech. Here he was involved in a variety of projects including consulting for the Jindalee project, power supply designs including the NULKA rocket system for Defence and TAILS - Train Automatic Integrity and Location System. He then moved to ICI Instruments and is now a service engineer for BioRad - a medical equipment multinational. His main expertise is in measurement and instrumentation, and has dealt extensively with Fourier transform infrared spectrography and confocal microscopy with lasers. Allan and wife Katheran are proud parents of two daughters Megan (4) and Beth (3).

Alistair Grant [BE'85] was initially a systems engineer with the Board of Works and developed a real time network management system for telemetry. During the privatisation moves, Alistair joined MITS where he is now a project manager for an object oriented development system called Visual Works. He has been involved in local software developments of the system and with various object oriented industry projects as a consultant. His expertise is in object oriented software engineering. Alistair and wife Wendy are expecting their first child in February.

ERRATA

Peter Gerrand (MEngSc'70) is in fact CEO of CITRI, and Professor of Telecommunications, not Electrical Engineering. After spending an enjoyable two years at Monash in the late '60s, he thought it only fair to share himself between RMIT and the University of Melbourne, 25 years later!

Bob de Boer (BE'71) is now running VisionStream.

Tell us about yourself! - I welcome all contributions to this newsletter, especially details on what you and your fellow graduates may now be doing. Your help in making this newsletter 'newsy' is eagerly sought. - Ed.

TRIBUTES
presented at the Memorial Service to commemorate the life of
DOUGLAS GEOFFREY LAMPARD
at the Monash University Religious Centre on

PROFESSOR BILL BROWN

Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
Monash University

For many of us here today Doug Lampard was the greatest intellect we have known.

I met him 30 years ago when I joined the Department and I well remember our first meeting. Here was this tall, smiling, charismatic man with a very strong personality and boundless energy. His influence in my life has been enormous and I think of him with immense gratitude.

The story of how he set up the Department of Electrical Engineering at Monash goes back to his school days when he was torn between whether to do electrical engineering or chemistry at University. As it turns out he did neither, but took bachelor's and master's degrees in physics at Sydney University. He then went to Cambridge where he took his PhD in mechanical sciences! However this gave him the right background as an electrical engineer and that has been his main career.

Following Cambridge he spent a year in the US then rejoined the CSIRO in Sydney where he became world famous for the Lampard Capacitance Theorem, the theorem which revolutionized electrical standards.

Thus he came to Monash in 1962 with a well-established reputation and set about the business of forming a modern dynamic Department of Electrical Engineering. Those of us who were privileged to be here in the first ten years look back at that period as being the most exciting in our lives. Doug's energy, enthusiasm and skills inspired everyone. He was a legend amongst the academic and scientific community of the day, both nationally and internationally. He established a Department with a strong tradition of scholastic achievement of the highest order. Those ideals are still very much in evidence today, although the Department is much larger than it was then and the nature of what it does has changed to a fair degree.

Doug was a person with an astonishing array of skills, both intellectual and manual. He had a photographic memory and he could store vast amounts of information . He was genuinely cross-disciplinary and made significant contributions in circuit theory, field theory, applied mathematics, statistics, physiology, pharmacology and chemistry. His ability to apply the ideas of one field to another was often the key to his success.

For example he brought to physiology a physical sciences and engineering perspective that has led to the solution of important problems. Likewise his knowledge and understanding in a number of areas enabled him to make major contributions in anaesthesia. These contributions were not only of a theoretical kind but also quite practical. His workshop and animal laboratory skills were quite amazing.

His own strongest research links were with the medical profession and the biological sciences community, although he fostered departmental links with the SEC and Telecom, the largest employers of our graduates over the years. He was active in professional society committees and was a prominent figure amongst the Professors of Electrical Engineering in Australia.

He became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1969 and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1976. His highest recognition was election to the Australian Academy of Science in 1977.

He has touched the lives of all of us here today, and there are many circles represented. First and foremost are the staff and students of the Department. He taught a generation of electrical engineers and all who attended his lectures have been affected by his personality, his ideals and his enthusiasm for the discipline. In spite of being intellectually formidable he was at heart a patient and helpful teacher. His research students remember him with special affection - and indeed he was delighted when we recently instituted the Douglas Lampard medal for the best research student in any year.

Another sphere of activity was that of his music. He enjoyed a lifetime passion for jazz and played the banjo with great skill amongst a wide circle of musical acquaintances. He had an acute ear for musical chords which he inherited from his mother. As a youth he developed an unconventional tuning and fingering system for the banjo which made the "Lampard" sound distinctive. He used the technique for the rest of his life. He would be delighted to know that so many of his musical friends are able to play for us today.

Also represented here are the winemakers of the Yarra Valley who have appreciated his services to the wine industry over the past decade and especially since his retirement.

With regard to Doug as a person I suppose his incredible intellect was his most striking feature. But he was also strong minded, decisive and persuasive. He fought strongly for the academic ideals in which he believed and was a forceful voice in the councils of the University.

He was also a devoted family man and we share with Roslyn, Debbie, Mandy, Chris, Ian, Timmy and Melissa the grief that they feel today. His death was sudden and we can hardly believe that this great man has gone from our lives.

Since Doug's death there have been many letters of sympathy to the Department and to Roslyn. I will read from just three of them:

From Nhan Levan, Doug's first PhD student at Monash now a Professor at UCLA:

"A most creative and exciting scientific life, a successful and distinguished professional life and a loving and caring family life. A key factor in his success was always to uphold the highest standards of scholarship. He did indeed enrich and shape our lives."

From Mat Darveniza, a Professor at the University of Queensland:

"He was admired and respected by all who had the good fortune to know him. Many, and I am certainly one, became better engineers or scientists as a consequence of his contributions to knowledge and his commitment to excellence. He led us all by example."

From Martin Elias, a student of the 70 's and now an optical fibre consultant in Canberra:

"I was under his spell like most of us and remember his infectious enthusiasm for whatever he put his considerable intellect to. I trust that the memorial service will be an occasion for the many people who have known the Prof to share memories of the ways in which his fruitful career has influenced their own."

May I say from the Department and from my own heart "Farewell Doug Lampard".

EMERITUS PROFESSOR KENNETH HUNT
First Dean of Engineering, Monash University

Eight days before Doug Lampard died I visited him in Knox Private Hospital. Several weeks before that my wife Marianne and I had learnt of his illness, and we had understood the great concern of Roslyn and the family, and their feelings that they wanted to be left free from frequent telephone calls and visits to their home. So we respected these wishes. For much of the time, I believe, Doug was suffering considerable distress, and it would have been unwise for us to intrude.

However, when I did see Doug, he had received what seemed to me to be almost miraculous treatment that greatly relieved his discomfort. He and I had a long talk. In typical Lampard fashion he took me stage by stage through the physical effects of his disease and explained in considerable detail the nature of the treatment he was receiving. While of course he was fully aware that he had only a short time to live, he never once touched on that matter. Rather, he was positively cheerful, and we had many laughs. We had so many views to exchange, and many remembrances of the years we had spent together at Monash; the time passed very quickly, and our conversation lasted well over an hour. Even though it may have tired him, it could have given him some comfort. Certainly it made a deep impression on me: here was a man of courage and determination whose life was being cut short too early, for there was more that, given the chance, he could have given.

His thoughts, and mine, inevitably turned back to the early days at this university. I don't think that, in those years, I appreciated how lucky I was to have had a hand in the development of a new university from scratch, a task that in retrospect seems almost scary. Doug had already been involved for a short time in university work, at the University of New South Wales, but, for one reason or other, that did not turn out satisfactorily for him. Somehow the ambience of the place, still in the stages of transition from the former Sydney Technical College to a real university, was not sympathetic to Doug, even though there must have been some consolation from the point of view of his research - and one of his collaborators there will be speaking to you in a few minutes. Taken overall, Doug must have felt not just unhappy but also shaken by events at that time.

At any rate, he returned to CSIRO perhaps a little disenchanted, perhaps a little wiser. I like to think that he viewed the Monash prospect entirely differently. Here was a university far too young to have prejudices; a university being encouraged to grow fast and establish its own new ethos rather than inheriting an old one. The horizon was going to be widening, and the nature of the journey towards that horizon was up to those lucky enough to be around at the time.

Monash has been an extraordinarily fortunate university, especially so far as its engineering faculty is concerned. No other university in Australia has even been in a comparable situation - indeed, few in the world even have. And, in the light of events and in the opinions of many, we have been remarkably successful. The foundations for our success have been the people who have come here, especially those with vision, with determination, with an absolute regard for the standards of scholarship that must be attained, with a flexibility to adjust the aims and objectives to suit a changing world, and - and here I mention a quality that I fear is being eroded away in many universities these days - a devotion and loyalty to the university itself. Who better fits this prescription than Doug Lampard?

Others here today have words to say about Doug's wide abilities and his striving after excellence. It is not for me to say anything about his main lines of research, or even about his other scientific interests, the breadth of all of which is really staggering. Yet he balanced his powerful grasp on what I might call "scientific abstractions" with a keen sense of practical engineering skills - and he was proficient in many. To add to all of this he was a musician. I have in the past considered myself as a bit of a musician too, but not exactly in the same field as Doug's. I remember, years ago, that I have been fascinated by a particular passage - a simple passage, yet subtle - in a late Beethoven piano sonata. The writing was in canon, a repetition of a melodic line on top of itself after a delay of a few beats, and Beethoven had treated this form with extraordinary originality. I opened the music and pointed the passage out to Doug. He smiled sheepishly, and said that he couldn't read music. I don't know whether he later acquired the technique of reading music; yet he obviously knew what it was all about, the tuning, the structure, the rhythm, the harmony, and all the rest of it. He had an amazing ear. This was a creative outlet that must, surely, have been absolutely essential to him as a kind of counterbalance to the entirely different intellectual discipline of his work.

I am one of the many people here today - and there are others who are unable to be here - who are proud to have known Doug, and to have had some contact with him in the general framework of the university. This university has gained a great deal through Doug's being a part of it. From the other side, I think Doug himself gained something from the university, in so far as it provided him, in reasonable measure, with the scope that a person of his intellect deserved. Monash University remembers Doug with great affection and admiration, and I know that there are tangible ways in which his name will long be associated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering and with the staff and students at all levels who work in it. Somehow the department will have to ensure that more than merely his name will be perpetuated; the character of the man must somehow get across to those of future generations.

To Roslyn, Debbie and Mandy, and their families, I express my deepest sympathy for the loss of someone who had been so close to them for so long; and I know that everyone here joins me in these sentiments. The family surely feels, as I do, a sense of privilege for having had such a person as Doug around. I know that you all join me in wishing Ros Lampard, the Weymouths, and the Coombses a successful future, a happy one too, strengthened by their recollections of and love for an outstanding man.

PROFESSOR STEVE REDMAN
Head of Neurosciences, John Curtin School of Medical Research
Australian National University

My credentials for speaking here today are that Doug and I were friends and colleagues for 34 years. This association began in 1960, when I became his first research student. Throughout the years that have passed by since those heady days in Sydney in the early 60's, our relationship went through some rewarding and exciting periods, as well as some stormy episodes. But through it all, I maintained enormous respect for Doug for his outstanding analytical abilities, for his enthusiastic support of research and scholarship of the highest standard, and I will never forget the great start he gave to my career in research.

When Doug took me under his supervisory wing in 1960, I found him to be inspirational. I was in awe of his mathematical prowess. He gave me such an exciting vision of research that I was hooked, and I have remained hooked ever since. Doug instilled the very essence of scholarship into his students. The problem was not solved until every nook and cranny had been explored, and until every aspect of the problem had been cross-referenced for internal consistency. Doug's enthusiasm and energy were contagious. Research became an integral part of one's life, and not just work. I am enormously grateful for the exceptional quality of the research training I received from Doug. I am sure that the many research students who were subsequently supervised by Doug would feel the same way.

Sometimes our interactions took place in unusual locations. I must tell you the story of how a particularly knotty mathematical problem was solved that led to my first research publication. Doug and I had worked for several days on this one, and we were stuck. We decided to go to the pub for a few beers, and if I recall correctly, the session developed beyond just a few beers. The conversation eventually came back to our troublesome mathematical problem, and Doug had a flash of insight on how to solve it. We didn't have paper or pen, nor did the barman. So Doug poured some beer out to make a film of beer on the top of the bar, and proceeded to write out the equations with his finger and to solve the problem. What's more, he remembered how to do it the next day. It would have been fun if there had been a Methods section in the paper where the true story could have been told.

I tell you this story to give you a little insight on Doug before he came to Monash. He had a lot of boyish fun in his make-up. He wasn't at all pretentious, and he was good fun to be with.

As you know, Doug was appointed as the foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering at this university in 1962. He asked me to join him, and I came here as a lecturer in 1963. The next few years were exciting and challenging, and they involved a lot of hard work. We started with a brand new building, no equipment, no third or fourth year courses, and one third year student. Doug displayed tremendous leadership, and he worked very hard to make it an outstanding department. Within a few years, as the research publications began to flow, that department achieved a high profile for its research, due largely to Doug's drive and to the emphasis that he placed on high quality research.

Looking back, I think Doug's most creative scientific period was from the early 50's until the late 60's. I don't think the cares and responsibilities of chairing a university department meshed at all well with Doug's personality. The frustrations at having to deal with others who did not share the same ideals and commitment to scholarship, at least as he saw it, seemed to change his personality and his enjoyment of his academic work. This made Doug a difficult person at times, and it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the more difficult aspects of Doug's personality. Doug was an only child, and I suspect he may have been spoilt. He was also a perfectionist. Much of his difficult behaviour stemmed from frustrations at not getting his own way, or from things being done imperfectly. When he became annoyed, many of his staff and students were terrified of him. I am not sure if Doug realised how intimidating he could be.

I remember one PhD student of mine who went to a lunchtime screening at the Monash Film Society. The film he was watching was to be followed by a series of Buster Keyton films during the afternoon. Just before the changeover, Doug came into the theatre, recognised this particular student, sat next to him, and commented on how delighted he was to discover that they had a common love of Buster Keyton movies. Now this student loathed Buster Keyton movies, but he was terrified to say so, and so he endured the whole program.

Doug had a short fuse, and a low irritation threshold, but he was always direct and forthright; he did not avoid difficult issues, and he was never devious.

I would like to return to Doug the scientist. His restless curiosity led him into many fields of enquiry. These included stochastic processes, electrostatics, neurophysiology, muscle mechanics, anaesthesia and analytical chemistry applied to wine making. In some of these fields, particularly stochastic processes and electrostatics, he was an intellectual giant. I have often thought that Doug's style was more suited to research in the 19th Century and that Doug would have stood comfortably alongside such scientific giants as von Hemholtz, Thomas Young and Lord Kelvin.

I would like to tell you a story that illustrates Doug's multi-dimensional character. In the late 70 's Doug went through a phase of making perfumes. Maybe this was triggered by having two daughters who were then at an age where they were starting to spend money on perfumes. I was doing an experiment in my lab, and it was dimly lit. I had an overseas visitor there that day who didn't know Doug. Doug came into this darkened room , wearing dark glasses and didn't see the visitor in the corner. He came over to me, and asked me to smell one of his wrists. Then he asked me to smell the other wrist. Which one did I prefer? Then he strode out. After he left, my visitor wanted to know who he was, and I said "The Professor of Electrical Engineering". The visitor was incredulous.

Finally, I would like to make the observation that Doug was devoted to Roslyn and his two daughters. He was always concerned about their welfare, and he was particularly helpful to the two girls during their secondary and tertiary education. Doug's death will leave an enormous hole in the family, and I am sure all of you will join me in offering Roslyn, Debbie, Mandy and their husbands our deepest sympathy.

The world is an emptier place now that Doug has gone. We have lost a unique character. However, we should rejoice that he led such a creative life. His legacy will be the inspiration and training that he gave to his students, instilling in them the need to strive for excellence, and the stimulation that he provided to many colleagues who were fortunate enough to work with him. I will never forget him. I was enormously fortunate to have had him as my mentor, and I am particularly grateful that I was able to tell him these things before he died. Farewell Doug.

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Electrical & Computer Systems | Faculty of Engineering | Monash University

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Last updated 6 June 1996