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The Laboratory of Lubricants and Bearings
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The Laboratory of Lubricants and Bearings
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1. The only Australian in the family | 2 | 542 | 01:40 |
2. The superb University High School | 1 | 190 | 03:06 |
3. The unique assessment system at University High School | 159 | 01:09 | |
4. How I got to working with nitroglycerine | 137 | 01:59 | |
5. The old degree structure at Melbourne University | 114 | 01:26 | |
6. The Laboratory of Lubricants and Bearings | 100 | 03:02 | |
7. Being valued as a lab technician | 104 | 01:02 | |
8. 'Don't be a bloody fool, put in for Honours!' | 1 | 121 | 01:30 |
9. Cradling nitroglycerine | 124 | 02:22 | |
10. A world class chemistry department | 145 | 03:08 |
I want to emphasise perhaps a little bit about the degree structure at Melbourne University because it's quite different from what it now is and what is, I think... Well, it's a little bit like the Scotch system, but not like the one in England. The system was that you took four subjects in the first year, three subjects in the second year and two subjects in final year, but the two subjects could be A and B parts of the same subject. So you could do double chemistry or chemistry and metallurgy, chemistry and geology, and so forth. That was the technical part, but also in Melbourne in those days you had to do two years of French and two years of German. These were translation exercises; if you'd done Pass Sixth, as I had in French, you were excused the first year. If you'd done Honours Sixth, which I hadn't done, you had to do the second year of French, and in German... I had no German – I'd done Latin at school as a second foreign language – then you had to do that from scratch. So that was added on to the course.
Norman Greenwood (1925-2012) was born in Australia and graduated from Melbourne University before going to Cambridge. His wide-ranging research in inorganic and structural chemistry made major advances in the chemistry of boron hydrides and other main-group element compounds. He also pioneered the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy to problems in chemistry. He was a prolific writer and inspirational lecturer on chemical and educational themes, and held numerous visiting professorships throughout the world.
Title: The old degree structure at Melbourne University
Listeners: Brian Johnson
Professor Brian FG Johnson FRS, FRSE, FRS Chem, FAcad Eu, FAS. Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Edinburgh 1991-1995, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Cambridge 1995-2005, Master Fitzwilliam College Cambridge 1999-2005. Research interests include studies of transition metal carbonyls, organometallic chemistry, nano- particles and homogeneous catalysis. Professor Johnson is the author of over 1000 research articles and papers.
Tags: University of Melboune, Scotland, UK
Duration: 1 minute, 26 seconds
Date story recorded: May 2011
Date story went live: 25 November 2011