Words by Mrs Pam Goesch, Emeritus Professor Angus Martin and Faculty of Arts staff.

Keith was born in the town of Cootamundra in 1927, and as Keith always reminded anyone, this was also the birthplace of Don Bradman. Like many country children of his and previous generations, he was the first of his family to finish high school, and the first to go to university.

He commenced his academic career at the University of Sydney and graduated with First Class honours, and then completed his Diploma of Education. In those days, it was not possible to do a higher degree, like the Doctor of Philosophy in Australia, so anyone hoping to teach at a university level tried to win a scholarship to study overseas. Keith won a French Government scholarship and left to study in Paris. Despite the final terrifying ordeal of defending his thesis in a medieval courtroom atmosphere against the Sorbonne examiners, he was awarded his doctorate.

Upon returning to Australia he took up a teaching post back at his alma-mater, the University of Sydney as a teaching fellow. He enjoyed being part of french language teaching in schools and the wider community. Keith worked with the ABC on its “French for Schools “ programmes, lectured to WEA classes, produced French recordings for use in schools through Australia, was on the Alliance Francaise committee for many years, and was a member of Department of Education committees, and was Chief Examiner for the Leaving Certificate in NSW.

Returning to France in 1960 he became more and more interested in the work of one of the major French writers of the twentieth century, Francois Mauriac, who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952. Keith’s work on Mauriac received the Medal of the City and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bordeaux III.

Back home, he continued at the University of Sydney, progressing from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer, and then Associate Professor. In 1964 the NSW Government decided to set up a third city university, to be called Macquarie University. Keith was appointed as one of the founding professors, and first Head of the School of Modern Languages. In the School of Modern Languages, eventually fourteen languages were taught as part of the curriculum, while others were available in the Continuing Programme. As part of this expansion, Keith briefly visited various universities overseas to help arrange exchanges of students and teachers.

Keith was Professor of French, and Head of the School of Modern Languages for over 30 years. Somehow he also helped run open days for the general public, shows like “It’s a Small, Small World” sound and light show for over 6000 students and their teachers, ably supported by his staff. It was sometimes hectic, but always enjoyable, as Keith and his staff sought to make the study of languages a useful and worthwhile study.

He was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature and the title of Emeritus Professor.

Keith also tried to make Australia better known in France, speaking at conferences and writing articles. These included writing on the opening of the Opera House for a French periodical, and on Patrick White when he won the Nobel Prize.

Keith enjoyed a long and productive life. His written work will live on for students and lovers of French literature. Others may remember him for his devotion to his extended family, and to the game of tennis. He will be missed by many.

Words by Professor Kevin Jameson

On Sunday 28 June 2015 Dr Ed Watts sadly passed away. Ed had been a staff member of the University since 1988 and was a valued teacher, researcher and friend of the Macquarie community.  He completed his PhD at UNE Armidale and joined the then Division of Economics and Finance. He was a man of great intellect and highly respected by his peers.  Since then Ed has contributed an enormous amount to the Macquarie University community, and to the Faculty of Business and Economics as a Senior Lecturer.

Ed was active in the disability sector and was the Chairman of the Board of Spinal Cord Injuries Australia. He had a very close relationship with Macquarie – not only through his work, but also personally through his wide range of professional relationships and many friendships. He met his wife Susan at Macquarie and was married on campus. Through his scholarship and his contribution to the disability sector he gave so much to so many.

He lived for 43 years with quadriplegia, and for most of that time Ed was in much better health than others in his situation, and his quiet dignity and attitude to life created a cheerful presence in the Department of Applied Finance and Actuarial Studies. He will be very sorely missed by his students, colleagues and friends of the University community.

Our thoughts are with Susan, his son Liam, and his wider family and friends.

Words by Dr James Cresser

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Dr Guy Fletcher who passed away on 27 March 2015. He was one of the earliest academic staff members of both the Physics Department and of Macquarie University itself.

Guy joined Macquarie as a Lecturer in January 1967. He graduated with an MA Honours in Physics and Mathematics from Cambridge University, UK in 1961 and prior to joining Macquarie, he was Head of Physics at Canford, a leading public school in England.

At Macquarie, Guy became a key member of the biophysics group in the Physics Department and subsequently completed his PhD in this area in 1975. Guy’s time at Macquarie was one of great development and change for our institution with its growth into a major Australian university. In the 1990s, with colleague Dr John Robertson, he developed the first computer-based enrolment system for Macquarie’s then School of Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Electronics which was later expanded to become a University-wide system, in use for all Macquarie University student enrolments until 2000.

Guy retired from Macquarie after three decades of dedicated academic contribution in 1997. He was a meticulous experimentalist and successful in winning Australian Research Council grant funding for his research in the 1980s. Guy was also an outstanding lecturer. Students he taught liked him for his clear expositions and he was much appreciated by staff whom he very helpfully mentored.

He also had wider teaching influence. During a period of study leave at the Open University (UK) in the 1970s, he developed some of their earlier physics courses at a time when they were beginning to televise lectures.

Guy’s practical and theoretical skills extended outside the University to a lifelong interest in amateur radio. He was a foundation member of the Hornsby and District Amateur Radio Club and more recently was involved with moon-bounce experiments and bouncing radio signals off aircraft as a means of long-distance communication.

He led a very active life, including involvement in tennis, bushwalking, sailing and music. In recent years he continued his travels and interests despite periods of ill health.

Those at Macquarie who worked with Guy will greatly miss him. The Department of Physics and Astronomy extends its condolences to Guy’s wife, Catherine, and family members.

Arthur Delbridge began his distinguished academic career at Sydney University, attaining first-class honours and the university medal in 1941, and subsequently committed himself to war service from 1942 to 1945, including a period in Borneo. He returned to postgraduate training at the Sydney Teachers College, and spent a year as a country teacher in Cootamundra. In 1948 he was appointed a lecturer at the Armidale Teachers College, where he won an Imperial Relations Trust Fellowship to travel to the UK to complete an MA at the University of London from 1950 to 1952. On returning he taught again at the Sydney Teachers College, and by 1955 had been appointed as lecturer at the then Institute of Technology, which became the University of New South Wales.

In 1958 Arthur took up a lectureship in the English Department at Sydney University, where he developed wide research interests in English linguistics, including phonetics, lexicography, grammar, stylistics and language variation, especially Australian English. During the 1960s he undertook (with colleague Professor Alex Mitchell) a ground-breaking study of the Australian accent and its distribution among 7000 high school students in all states. It remains the largest research study of its kind, and its data was so outstanding in its quality that it was digitised in the 1990s and is now incorporated in the Australian National Corpus. This research on the speech of Australian adolescents was remarkable also in relating socioeconomic data to the students’ recordings, and identifying the differences between typical city and country accents. It thus laid the foundations for sociolinguistic research in Australia.

In 1966 Arthur was appointed as the foundation Professor of English (language and linguistics) at the newly established Macquarie University, where he developed major courses of study in English linguistics. He appointed new staff to teach in areas such as phonetics, English grammar and discourse, historical linguistics, and Australian field linguistics (in Aboriginal languages). He added audiology and speech pathology as postgraduate offerings, and established the Speech and Language Research Centre (later the Speech, Hearing and Language Research Centre), which has remained the focus of innovative speech technology, and research on Australian phonetics and phonology.

Arthur’s major work in Australian lexicography began during the 1970s, researching the details of current Australian English for the first comprehensive dictionary, and working through a series of challenges to find an Australian publisher for it. An independent publisher was eventually found in the person of Kevin Weldon (ex Paul Hamlyn Publishing), who liaised with Australian newspaper presses to launch the Macquarie Dictionary in 1981, and set up Macquarie Library Pty Ltd. The first Dictionary contained more than 76,000 headwords, thus a full record of everyday spoken and written language used in Australia. The Macquarie Dictionary is one of only two in the world to bear the name of the university whose research and scholarship produced it. The Dictionary was an early adopter of computerised databases for citational records and for the dictionary text itself, from which alternative/smaller versions are developed. Electronic forms of publication began with a CDROM accompanying the third edition (1997), and an online version is now available to subscribers, as well as a range of apps. The impact of the Macquarie Dictionary on Australian English and recognition of it has been immeasurable.

Arthur’s support for fellow academics and their careers also shines through in countless collaborative projects and publications – apart from the Macquarie Dictionary – that carry his name as well as that of others. Those who worked in the Department with him feel an immense debt of gratitude for the scope they enjoyed to expand new areas of linguistics. We remember and appreciate his contributions to the running of linguistic conferences such as Australex and Style Council, and to the Dictionary Research Centre, well after his retirement. Above all it was Arthur’s good humoured style that created such a happy and productive professional environment, where sustained friendships were made. We are all beneficiaries of this legacy.

Words by Professor Julie Fitness

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Emeritus Professor Jacqueline Goodnow (BA Sydney; PhD Harvard; DSc Macquarie) on Tuesday 24 June.

Professor Goodnow served as an Associate Professor in Macquarie’s School of Education between 1972-1976 and as Professor in the School of Psychology between 1976-1990. She then held the position of Professorial Research Fellow (Emeritus Professor), Psychology, in the School of Behavioural Sciences and later, the Division of Linguistics and Psychology/Faculty of Human Sciences.

Professor Goodnow was a pioneering developmental psychologist with particular research interests in the ways in which parents and family members understand their roles and obligations, and on the influence of socio-cultural contexts on aspects of child development. She was also recognised for her innovative work on children’s drawing.

Over the course of her eminent career, Professor Goodnow received numerous prestigious awards, including the G. Stanley Hall Award for distinguished contributions to developmental psychology, received from the American Psychological Association (1990); the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development from the Society for Research in Child Development, USA (1997); and the Australian Psychological Society’s Award for distinguished contributions to research in psychology (1997). She was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, and the American Psychological Association included her in a list of Distinguished Women in Psychology in 1992, the same year that she received the Award of Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).

Over the last few years Professor Goodnow was an active researcher and mentor in the Institute of Early Childhood’s Children and Families Research Centre, and at the time of her death (aged 89 years) was still publishing in the field of developmental psychology.
Emeritus Professor Goodnow will be greatly missed.  Her contribution to the field of developmental psychology will have an enduring influence.

A private funeral will be held.  Please contact either Professors Julie Fitness (julie.fitness@mq.edu.au) or Professor Janet Greeley (janet.greeley@mq.edu.au)  for contact details to send condolences to the family.

Words by Professor Brian Orr

As those of us within the Faculty of Science already know, Macquarie University lost one of its most highly respected academics last month. At the age of 74 and after a determined battle, Emeritus Professor Noel Cant succumbed to lymphoma on 11 April 2014.

Noel will be remembered by many as a quiet achiever, a brilliant researcher, and a dedicated teacher. Having graduated from The University of Western Australia, he was appointed in 1970 as a Lecturer in the early days of our School of Chemistry and served the University loyally for over forty years. In my experience (which spans most of that period), one could always rely on Noel’s encyclopaedic knowledge, his sound judgement, and his wise opinions; moreover, he was an exceptionally kind and considerate friend.

A measure of Noel Cant’s standing, both at Macquarie University and internationally, is that he was one of the first of a small number of our academics to be selected as a Personal Chair – back in the early 1990s when ‘promotion to a Chair’ was a rare distinction. Earlier, in 1986, Noel had shared the Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s Erich Heymann Applied Research Medal with (the late) David Trimm and Mark Wainwright.

There have been many personal tributes for Noel:

“Noel was a truly outstanding physical chemist whose research expertise was in the mechanistic studies of industrial and environmental catalysis. He made seminal contributions to many of these areas and remained a very active researcher to the end. … He will be deeply missed by the Australian and international community of catalyst researchers.” – Professor Peter Nelson, Executive Dean, Faculty of Science

“Professor Cant was a legend and the world is now a little less well-off with him gone.” – Research colleagues at the University of New South Wales

“Noel Cant was a great man, a man of grace. He was my mentor and my friend” – Dr Dennys Angove, CSIRO researcher, Noel’s colleague and former PhD student (as spoken at Noel’s well-attended funeral)

Our sympathy and appreciation go to Noel’s wife Jenny, daughter Susan (Taylor), sons Christopher and Anthony, and their families.