Celebrating Emeritus Professor David Blair, his work and induction into the WA Science Hall of Fame.

It was a privilege to join distinguished guests of the science community to celebrate David’s work.?Other attendees included other Hall of Fame Scientists Nobel Prize Laureate Barry Marshall, Professor Lyn Beazley and?Professor Cheryl Praeger; as well as UWA Chancellor Hon Robert French and Vice Chancellor Professor Amit Chakma.

David is an experimental physicist, who has pioneered areas of precision measurement science. He is responsible for numerous innovations including the 1984 invention of the first sapphire clock, a super-precise timepiece designed for space, and the niobium bar gravitational wave detector.?A passionate communicator of science he is the author of multiple books, over 700 scientific publications, twenty provisional and world patents and has supervised over 70 postgraduate students.

His work in the field of physics has been recognised through numerous awards including the Prime Minister’s Science prize, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, National Medal for Community Service, WA scientist of the Year and Science Hall of Fame.

David has spent over 40 years building gravitational wave detectors, studying their physics and driving public education programs in Einsteinian physics. All his professional work is characterised by passionate advocacy and tireless pursuit of excellence.

His enthusiasm and engagement with science was recognised at an early age when he won a science talent competition run by the Science Teacher’s Association of WA for building a motion sensing, robotic turtle whilst at Guildford Grammar school. ?Quite an achievement in in 1963!

After tertiary studies & a PhD in Physics, he found a real challenge in the search to detect Einstein’s predicted gravitational waves. These waves distort the fabric of space-time. Einstein himself doubted whether they would ever be detected because of their unimaginably small effects in distorting space and time.

David led the establishment of the Gravitational Research Centre and the Zadko Observatory at Gingin, Western Australia. Using the research facility there David led a team of 21 physicists to make significant contributions to the international Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) program - which ultimately resulted in the first direct observation of gravitational waves at the US observatories in Louisiana and Washington state.

When the ‘discovery’ gravitational wave passed through the earth at the speed of light in 2015, the width of the Australian continent changed by a fraction of an atomic nucleus!?You can imagine why Einstein expressed doubt as to whether gravitational waves would ever be detected.

The direct observation of a gravity wave was the culmination of work David began in 1976.

David’s is passionate and has made equally material contributions to science outreach and education. Einsteinian?science?unleashed?the?technological?revolution?that underpins modern civilisation, forming the basis for computers, mobile phones, GPS, green technology, etc.

Long concerned about the lack of focus on Einsteinian physics in school education he conceived and led the initial Einstein-First project in 2012 trialling classroom learning of Einsteinian physics. ?Since 2019 his team has been progressing a system of learning in modern physics through primary and secondary school. Seven nations are involved and the Einstein-First book plus teacher aides will be released next month.

In 1999 David co-founded with EP John DeLaeter the Gravity Discovery Centre as a major education and public outreach facility at Gingin. The facility is co-located with gravity research facilities at Gingin that are now part of the National Centre of Excellence for Gravitational wave Discovery, OzGrav. The GDC currently inspires over 15,000 visitors and students from 100 schools each year.

In his words ‘The centre brought artists, scientists religious and cultural leaders together to create a place that celebrated the unity of human yearning to understand our place in the universe and the rich diversity of our cultural insights’.

David continues to contribute to the physics community as Emeritus Professor at University of Western Australia, outreach program leader at the ARC centre of excellence OzGrav and leader of the Einstein-First science education initiative.

The event was hosted at Scitech Australia by CEO Paul Stone and Don Pridmore. Chair of the Gravity Discovery Centre treated the audience to a summary of David’s career. David himself took time to acknowledge the influence of his Year six primary school teacher who in his words “saved me”, Dr Peter Jarman, who mentored him as an undergraduate at UWA, and two contrasting US physicists who pioneered new concepts in gravitational wave detectors, the inspirational physicist Bill Fairbank at Stanford University, and?Bill Hamilton at Louisiana State University who always described himself as a “simple plumber”.

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