ASPS Life Membership
Life Membership of the Australian Society of Plant Scientists recognises an outstanding and sustained contribution to the Society by a longstanding ASPS member who, through their professional activities, has substantially enhanced the international profile of Australian plant science research.
Nominations for ASPS Life Membership can be made at anytime to the Honorary Secretary. A one-page summary addressing the above criteria must accompany the nomination. The Council Executive is charged with the responsibility of making a determination on submitted nominations and may seek peer advice.
Current ASPS Life Members are;
Dr Graham Farquhar
Australian National University, ACT
Email: graham.farquhar@anu.edu.au
Website: View website
Associate Professor Hendrik (Hank) Greenway,
University of Western Australia, WA
Email: hank.greenway@uwa.edu.au
Hank Greenway arrived in Australia in the 1950’s as Hendrik Groenewegen, a graduate of the Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands. He first worked as a soil scientist in South Australia and, after 1952, in the Riverina. He then completed a PhD at the University of Adelaide in the venerable team led by Professor Bob Robertson, doyen of membrane transport in plants, studying salt tolerance in barley. Hank returned to the CSIRO Division of Irrigation Research at Griffith, New South Wales, where he worked on ion transport in plants.
After moving to the University of Western Australia in 1967, he established a group of international stature investigating plant responses to the environment – salinity and waterlogging in particular. His research has relied heavily on rice and algae as models to quantify acclimation to stress: the principles laid out in some 135 research papers and many major reviews provide a framework for modern thinking about acclimation to abiotic stress.
Hank has embraced many disciplines in plant physiology, including nutritional biology, enzymology, bioenergetics, membrane physiology and gene expression. Every new experiment is guided by curiosity. When asked to summarise his research approach, Hank paraphrases von Clausewitz, saying “No research plan survives contact with the subsequent experimental results”.
Hank is a truly international scientist, forging collaborations with colleagues from Asia, Europe and the US, vigorously co-publishing with them and insisting that his graduate students spend time in laboratories abroad. Hank’s connections with SE Asia and its staple crop, rice, can be traced to his time in Indonesia in the 1940’s: this led to extensive training and exchange programmes with the countries of the region. He was the prime instigator of the RN Robertson Fellowship, keeping alive the principles of intellectual curiosity that Bob Robertson espoused. Hank was an inaugural member of our Society and was honoured with a Doctor of Science by the University of WA in 1986 and the Chancellor’s Medal in 2003. He remains active as a plant biologist well into retirement and enjoys the affections of his family and many colleagues.
Dr Marshall (Hal) D Hatch
Retired. Ex. Division of Plant Industry CSIRO, ACT
Email: halhatch@bigpond.com
Hal Hatch graduated from Sydney University, B.Sc (Hon) in 1954 and subsequently completed a PhD at the same institution while working at CSIRO Plant Physiology Unit in Sydney, graduating in 1959. Hal traveled to the USA at the end of his PhD to post-doc in the Biochemistry Department at University of California then returned to Australia in 1961 to take up a position as Head of the Biochemistry Section at Colonial Sugar Refineries (CSR) David North Laboratories Brisbane. After a brief period in the University of Queensland and a 2 year return to CSR, Hal joined CSIRO Plant Industry Canberra in 1970 as a Chief Research Scientist and remained in that position until his retirement in 1997.
Hal’s scientific focus has primarily been on C4 photosynthesis, having been instrumental in the discovery of this pathway with his colleague Roger Slack, reported in their papers between 1966 and 1970. He has continued to be a major driving force in C4 photosynthesis research, publishing seminal papers on the biochemistry and physiology of the C4 photosynthetic mechanism (totaling more than 140 papers). In addition to his elucidation of the basic biochemical pathway of C4, including the 3 decarboxylation types, Hal has delved into the physics of the C4 concentrating mechanism, its efficiency and the interaction of this photosynthetic mechanism with the environment through enzyme regulation. Much of this work is now described in text books.
Hal is one of the most internationally recognized Australian plant scientists, having been awarded the Royal Society of NSW Clarke Medal, the Lemberg Medal (Australian Biochemical Soc), the Charles Kettering Award (American Soc Plant Physiologists), Rank Prize (J. Arthur Rank Group, UK), and the International Prize for Biology (Japan Soc Promotion of Science) and the Order of Australia. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Royal Society of the UK, and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Science. Hal has served on many editorial panels for international scientific journals including Australian Journal of Plant Physiology, Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Trends in Biochemical Sciences and Proceedings of the Royal Society. Hal is also a past president of ASPS, at that time the Australian Society of Plant Physiologists.
Dr Mervyn M Ludlow
QLD
Dr Rana Munns
Australian National University, ACT
Email: rana.munns@csiro.au
Emeritus Professor Christina Offler
University of Newcastle, NSW
Email: tina.offler@newcastle.edu.au
Dr (Charles) Barry Osmond
Australian National University, ACT
Email: barry.osmond@anu.edu.au
Research interests: Cell/Tissue Physiology, Environment & Ecophysiology
Barry Osmond (BSc, MSc New England; PhD Adelaide) is an Australian plant biologist well known for his studies of the physiology of photosynthesis. His career was stimulated by research opportunities at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, interspersed with senior appointments in the United States (notably Duke University) and research collaborations in the United Kingdom at Cambridge and Sheffield and in Darmstadt, Göttingen and Jülich in Germany. Interests have ranged from C4 photosynthesis to CAM, photoprotection and photoinhibition.
His research on plant responses to excess light was supported by the US Department of Energy and other agencies, and by a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Barry’s last appointment before retirement was as President and Director of Research at Columbia University’s Biosphere 2 Center, a unique, visionary venture in experimental climate change science.
Retired since 2003, he is retains honorary fellow appointments in ANU and the University of Wollongong where is pursuing nonintrusive methods for ‘near remote sensing’ of photosynthesis using FRRF/LIFT (fast repetition rate fluorescence/light induced fluorescence transient) technologies that are well suited to capturing photosynthesis during sun flecks on old leaves in the shade.
Osmond CB (2014) Our eclectic adventures in the slower eras of photosynthesis: from New England down under to Biosphere 2 and beyond. Annual Review of Plant Biology 65: 1-32
Emeritus Professor John W Patrick
University of Newcastle, NSW,
Email: john.patrick@newcastle.edu.au
John Patrick graduated from Sydney University in 1966 with a 1st Class Honours Degree in Agricultural Science. Thereafter, under the supervision of Fred Milthorpe, he completed a PhD in plant physiology at Macquarie University. Postdoctoral experience in plant development (1970 – 1972) was gained through joining Phillip Wareing’s research group (University College of Wales). In 1973 John returned to Australia to take up a lectureship in the newly established Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Newcastle where he has remained throughout his career. Since retirement (2007), he has continued to pursue an active research program, and particularly so with his long-term collaborator, Christina (Tina) Offler.
John is recognised for his theoretical and experimental advances in the regulation of nutrient transport and partitioning in plants. He has developed a novel theoretical framework that identifies control points for the regulation of nutrient transport in, and unloading from, plant vascular networks. His experimental approaches have shown how metabolic demand for nutrients is coordinated with vascular transport by phytohormones, cell hydrostatic pressure and nutrient pool sizes. These discoveries have laid a conceptual framework to further elucidate nutrient transport and partitioning mechanisms and to identify novel targets for improving crop yield. His ‘retirement’ research with Tina Offler focuses on discovering mechanisms regulating assembly of the intricate wall labyrinth in transfer cells that determines the extraordinary capacity of these specialized cells for nutrient transport.