This is the full text of Tim Entwisle's keynote speech at the La Trobe University Graduate Research School launch on 4 May 2015 (John Scott Meeting House, Bundoora).
The School is one of a number of initiatives led by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Keith Nugent, that responds to the research objectives outlined in the University’s Future Ready strategy.
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Professor Tim Entwisle in full speech mode |
I spent about three and a half years at La Trobe University, studying the taxonomy and systematics of an alga called Vaucheria. Professor Bill Woelkerling was my PhD supervisor and Professor Alan Wardrop was the head of Botany.
Professor Wardrop’s research and rule were waning when I was there, but he had been a highly distinguished plant cell wall biologist in the 1950s. He had also left his mark as the foundation Chair then Dean in Biological Sciences, and foundation Professor of the Department of Botany. Interestingly, he was a champion of unity in biology and was unhappy in the 1960s when separate schools emerged for botany, zoology, and the like, preferring the intermeshed model very much in favour these days.
Bill Woelkerling had an equally formidable reputation as a scientist, part of Australia’s first wave of internationally important phycologists (algal specialists). He was much more self-contained than Professor Wardrop, and would have flourished in any school or department and under any disciplinary hierarchy. Bill had wallpapered his office with books, subdividing it to create more room for bookcases. His approach to work was regimented, orderly, and methodical. There was nothing left to chance. I was attracted to that at the time.
I’d done my undergraduate degree in Science, with an honours year, at the University of Melbourne, followed by a year at the Royal Botanic Gardens working as a (indoor) horticultural assistant while I decided what to do next. It only took a few months to realise that, yes, I enjoyed working in the botanic gardens – who wouldn’t? – but I needed to stretch myself intellectually first.
I wanted to discover new things and, looking back, to also
create something new. Something like a thesis.