Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

Serious games

International edition 11 April 2003

In 1913 a smallpox outbreak hit Sydney. There were riots at the Town Hall as people fought to be vaccinated, the Institute Building was used as a quarantine hospital and University won the 1st grade cricket Grand Final. Ninety years later we have again won the 1st grade cricket final.

This is particularly satisfying because a few years ago, shortly after I became vice-chancellor, the state administrators of both rugby and cricket threatened Sydney University with expulsion on the grounds that university sides were anachronisms which hindered the development of playing standards in a semi-professional era. A successful campaign by our many friends and alumni secured the position of the clubs, and both have now won both club championships and grand finals in the years that followed.

The final was no easy game with neither side passing 200 in either innings. Congratulations go to our winning captain, Shane Stanton, who scored in both innings and took several catches, to Danny Waugh who contrived both a duck and the Benaud Medal, for man of the match. He scored well in the first innings and took a key wicket on the first day, before taking five wickets on the final day. While plaudits go to the team as a whole, I would like to praise also Andrew Staunton who bowled effectively throughout and batted particularly well in the second innings and to Greg Matthews who fought injury in the game and returned an outstanding bowling average for the whole season.

In the interests of balance let me note that after two rounds of the rugby season, our football club has won every game in every grade, senior and colts, despite losing many players to representative duties in both weeks.

I was pleased last week to participate in the Warren Centre’s 30th anniversary symposium. As a participant in a mock Royal Commission on the commercialisation of research, I was well-armed by two events from the previous week. As you will read elsewhere in this News, the inaugural Peter Doherty Prize for Innovation was won by WeldPrint, a company spun off from Professor Steve Simpson’s research in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering. Moreover Dr Nelson in launching an independent review of the sector’s performance commended the Universities of Queensland and Sydney as those able to be judged by international best practice in research commercialisation.

A dash across town to hear Dame Gillian Beer speak on Alice in Space in the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series was well rewarded. Moreover the ‘Royal Commission’ and the discussion of Lewis Carroll were more cognate than one might imagine. Dame Gillian explores ways in which the mathematical and scientific developments of the 19th century are mirrored in its literature. In particular the language and images of the Alice books speak of the intellectual adjustment of the mathematical community to the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, to Clifford’s algebraic work on geometry and to the philosophical underpinnings of Maxwell’s unifying of electricity and magnetism aided by powerful geometric intuition.

A major goal of the Warren Centre is to bring a sense of innovation in science and technology to young minds whose exposure is to morality plays on good and evil – Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. We have Arcadia, A Beautiful Mind, or Copenhagen for adult minds. Where is the latter-day Dodgson?