Professor Pip Hamilton, who played a pivotal role in turning Deakin into one of Australia’s most accredited research universities and was renowned for his radio astronomy research, has died.
Prof Hamilton was recruited to Deakin in 1997 by the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Geoff Wilson, to create Deakin’s research profile, then lift it to the national and international stages.
The standing that Deakin’s researchers now have in Geelong, across Victoria and Australia, and globally, is his legacy.
Born in Launceston in 1942, Prof Hamilton gained a PhD at the University of Tasmania in physics and while working as both lecturer and researcher, built a reputation as one of the world’s leading radio astronomers.
In 1969, just as he was completing his PhD, he and fellow astronomers became aware of the radio waves emitted by collapsing stars.
Gifted with a quirky sense of humour growing up on another sort of radio broadcasts, The Goon Show, he called them LGM 1 and LGM 2.
Professor Pip Hamilton, pictured in 2006.
“LGM stands for ‘little green men’ because the pulsing signal looked like something that was very, very regular,” he said when he revisited the story at the time he received his Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to science and tertiary education.
“It had to be artificial, didn’t it, because no one had ever seen these things before?”
However, as more and more signals were discovered, and today there are around 600, the little green men theory was replaced with a more scientifically appropriate name, that of pulsars.
Prof Hamilton travelled the world, including the USA and the Soviet Union, working with other radio astronomers, delving deeply into the mysteries of the universe.
He was instrumental in having the Parkes telescope computerised, the fabled dish that had
played its part in the 1969 moon landing, and helped Tasmania into the space race with the
acquisition of a NASA telescope for the state.
Then, in 1992, Prof Hamilton moved into research administration.
That allowed him to concentrate on another of his passions, helping young researchers to develop their careers.
As Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Tasmania, he was lifting that
university’s research activities when Prof Wilson asked him to come and do the same for
Deakin.
From 1997 until his retirement in 2006, Prof Hamilton worked tirelessly to transform Deakin from what had been primarily a teaching institution into one which today has ever-growing research credentials.
Under his stewardship, the Waurn Ponds campus began its transformation into what is now a
globally recognised research hub.
Though his own career had been in the hard sciences, as a talented musician who would
entertain dinner guests by playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, he was also a great
supporter of the arts.
He had installed an organ – “the least transportable instrument ever” – into his living
room and also played the organ on Sundays at All Saints Church in Newtown.
On retirement, at which time Deakin awarded him a DSc honoris causa for his services to the
university, he declared his next ambition was to learn to play Bach properly.
Professor Hamilton leaves his wife Margaret and daughters Sally and Jenny.
Warwick Hadfield is a former journalist with The Australian.
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