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UWA's first Professor of Mathematics and Physics, A. D. Ross, became a legendary figure on campus. On the eve of UWA's Centenary, a collection of the decorations and medals awarded to the physicist was presented to the campus he had served with such distinction.

By the time he took up his appointment as the inaugural Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the fledgling University of Western Australia, the brilliant young Scottish physicist Alexander David Ross, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, had already published 30 papers. The young physicist arrived at this University with a considerable reputation for research on rare earth elements, the properties of alloys and atmospheric physics.

Professor Ross travelled out to Western Australia with Dr Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore (University of London) who had been appointed to the chair of Chemistry. Both had also spent time at the University of Göttingen in Germany and had made significant discoveries: Ross of the element dysprosium in the Solar spectrum and Wilsmore of a new organic compound, keten.

They left universities steeped in tradition and centuries-old buildings. What lay before them were chairs in a new university being established in the remote capital city of Perth. The prospect must have been both daunting and exhilarating.

Certainly, they faced a ‘baptism of fire', for the summer heat was intense in the University's first buildings: a collection of weatherboard-and-iron structures plucked from the Goldfields and relocated in Irwin Street. (The Irwin Street building was later relocated on campus.)

Professor Ross delivered his first lecture on March 31, 1913 to a combined Maths I and II class. He later recalled arriving the day before to find the lecture room ankle-deep in wood shavings left by workmen. With broom in hand, he may well have thought wistfully of the orderly academic life he had left behind.

More challenges were to follow. The lecture rooms were small and the din of workmen hammering an iron roof occasionally brought lectures to a halt.

The Physics room was so small that the young professor quickly established a process for entering and exiting: the students went in first carrying chairs, the professor followed, drawing into the doorway a blackboard on an easel. At the end of the lecture the procession retired in reverse order.

Conditions were less congested when the Departments of Biology and Geology and later Arts moved to the new Crawley site, but the old buildings were ill-suited for experimental science, vibrating incessantly.

"Accurate weighing was impossible," Professor Ross later recalled, "while the magnetic disturbance from passing trams upset all serious galvanometer work. Nor were living conditions any better. Classrooms and laboratories were intensely cold on winter mornings ... the air often reeked from varnish and resin exuded from the roasted furniture. In the height of summer conditions were ultra-tropical ..."

Writing about the two stoic professors from England, The Western Mail pondered: "Probably the professors of chemistry and physics would not have come to Australia had they known that nearly 23 years would elapse before they were installed in permanent quarters ... Yet excellent work was performed under these conditions, and students trained there as chemists and physicists have gone out into the world and attained positions of high eminence."

With limited resources, Professor Ross concentrated on undergraduate teaching and generating much community interest in science. He travelled widely, became popular as a public lecturer and broadcaster and his students admired him - and took delight in imitating his Scottish accent.

"Ross's dapper style, vitality and wit gave him presence," observes a biographer.

The able Scot held many offices including Vice- Chancellor (1918) and Dean of both Arts and Science. He was three times president of the Royal Society of WA and WA secretary of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science for many years.

During World War II, Professor Ross involved the University in the war effort, lobbying the Prime Minister to utilise the skills of Australian physicists and arranging for the Physics Department to manufacture optical equipment and provide advice to local firms making parts for optical munitions. The UWA physicist also arranged for his department to repair and calibrate the optical instruments from any ships in port at Fremantle.

Enlisted as a non-combatant, Professor Ross's wartime contribution was acknowledged by a Commander of the British Empire (CBE Civil) decoration along with a War Medal and Australian Service Medal. He also received a Royal Society of Arts medal (1951) and a University of Glasgow Kelvin gold medal for the best DSc dissertation. Several commemorative and service medals were also awarded to the professor, who died in 1966.

On the eve of UWA's Centenary, a collection of A.D. Ross medals has found its way back to the campus that Professor Ross served until 1952. The collection was purchased by UWA graduate Dr Mike Galvin, who recently presented it the Reid Library's Special Collections.

Dr Galvin is a graduate of Science and Medicine at UWA and, on retirement, became actively involved in research on the Great War. He is President of the Military History Society of WA and a member of the Royal WA Historical Society.

"I was lucky to be attending a military antiques auction when the medals came up for auction," says Dr Galvin. "I remembered studying Physics in the Ross Lecture Theatre and knew that when UWA had recruited Professor Ross it was regarded as a great coup because of his international stature, so I bought the medals as a Centenary gift to the University."

And his gesture is much appreciated.

Professor Ross's daughter Verna Rowbotham has retained her father's Kelvin Medal and prize.

"It was one of three solid gold medals minted just before the Great War and was very precious to my father. I feel it is part of the history of the University of Glasgow - that is where it belongs," says Verna who continues to live in the cottage at Middleton Beach in Albany to which her parents retired.

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 2 Winter 2012