Some snapshots from fifty years of geophysics

The history of geophysics in Australia began with the first European explorers, who were concerned with the measurement of basic geophysical quantities, such as the Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields (Day, 1966). By the first half of the twentieth century, Australia had been recognised as a possible happy-hunting ground for the new methods of exploration geophysics, as witness the account of the Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey (IGES) in the book by Broughton Edge and Laby (1931). World War II (WWII 1939-1945) was followed by major advances in technology and science, and particularly in the realisation of a nuclear age. The author came into geophysics in the mid1950’s, as scientists of many nations were keen to collaborate globally and peacefully, for example in the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958). Early in 1957 the author was awarded a cadetship in geophysics by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC), wishing at that time to foster the discovery of uranium ore in Australia, and working for that purpose with the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics (BMR). The geophysics arm of the BMR was in Melbourne, and the senior personnel had strong links with the IGES of some 25 years earlier (Wilkinson, 1996). Fifty years of geophysics is claimed on the basis that early in 1955, while a secondary school student on summer holidays, the author worked with a trigonometrical survey team in western Tasmania. The measurement of the Earth, and the determination of its shape, is perhaps the most fundamental geophysical pursuit of all.