INSPIRING OLD GRAMMARIAN

Following his curiosity has led Peter to a lifetime of work in groundbreaking research. His eminent service to experimental physics, academia and research and as a role model for young scientists was recognised in the 2023 Australia Day Honours List.

Peter says that, like most, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do after finishing school. It wasn’t until he’d completed his undergraduate degree in Physics that he got involved in research.

“Looking back, I can see trends I didn’t notice at the time that hinted towards the direction I’d take. When I started at Grammar as a boarder at age 11, I was into building crystal sets so we could listen to the test cricket at night when we were meant to be asleep. For the local station we could just run an earth wire around the legs of our bed, but to get a connection for the broadcasts from England we had to run the wire through the dorm and down behind the creeper to the ground outside!”

“I became a day boy after my family moved to Ballarat from Heywood when I was 14. I remember building a telephone system that went from my bedroom to a friend’s room down the street so we could chat to each other whenever we wanted without anyone knowing.”

Peter recalls many fond memories from his time at Grammar.

“I loved boarding and was extremely happy making so many friends. I came in contact with some really good people, like David Fawell who was the Prefect in my dormitory in 1952. He set a fine example and we all looked up to him.”

Coming from a sheltered life in the country with limited opportunities, Peter quickly made the most of what was on offer at Grammar.

We congratulate Old Grammarian Professor Emeritus Peter Hannaford AC. In this year’s Australia Day Honours, he was one of only six to be made a Companion (AC) in the general division of the Order of Australia for eminent service to Science.

“We were expected to participate in almost everything. I played lots of sports and, while I was never very good at the plays, I had a go. Being a small school, one of the strengths of Grammar was that it produced all-round citizens.”

Peter’s love for sport led to him representing the school in athletics, cross-country, tennis, rowing, cricket and football. Athletics was where he enjoyed the most success.

“I loved running in the handicap mile each year from Grade 6. When I was a bit older I started training with the school champion, Neil Young (1954). After Neil left school I enjoyed the limelight for a brief period before a couple of younger guys I trained with, John McRae and Stan Spittle (both 1959), ended up much better than me! Stan went on to become a national standard 800 yards runner.”

Peter recalls the teachers who had a big influence on him.

“I had very good teachers for Maths, Physics and Chemistry – Kostas Rind, Geoff Tunbridge and David Prest, who went on to become Principal of Wesley College. Mr Rind was a refugee from Lithuania. I was the only student in his Maths class in my first year of Matriculation. He said he’d teach me Maths and Physics if I taught him English! He was a very interesting person and was known as the Oracle as he knew so much about everything, even Australian Rules footy!”

After completing his studies including a PhD at Melbourne University, in 1967 Peter started work at the CSIRO Division of Chemical Physics where he would go on to become a Chief Research Scientist before moving to Swinburne University of Technology in 2001. His work has also taken him all around the world.

Peter reflects that he has been lucky to be involved in exciting experimental work in new fields of physics throughout his career, including laser spectroscopy, quantum physics and atom optics.

He recalls how wonderful it was to start work in the lab at the CSIRO under Sir Alan Walsh who was world-famous for developing the atomic absorption method of chemical analysis.

“Using this method, one could determine accurately how much of an element was in a sample within minutes whereas most methods prior to that took hours, or days in some cases. There happened to be a big mineral boom in Australia at the time and the technique really took off. It quickly revolutionised chemical analysis around the world. This method has a wide range of applications, from analysing blood in hospitals to analysing samples in agriculture and water samples in the environment. It is still being used today.”

Peter went on to research new methods using lasers which offered a new way of studying the spectroscopic properties of atoms for almost any element in the periodic table.

“This opened up a whole new area of laser atomic spectroscopy. A very good spin-off was that this was an important breakthrough in understanding what the sun and stars are made of.”

During his year as a Royal Society Guest Fellow at Oxford University in 1989, Peter learnt about an emerging field of physics, the laser cooling of atoms.

“This method uses lasers to chill atoms down to within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero – or minus 273 degrees Celsius – which is the coldest temperature one can go to. At such low temperatures atoms enter the strange quantum world and behave completely differently – they behave as waves – which has opened up a new field of research, that of Bose-Einstein condensation, in which the atoms in a cloud all behave in unison like a single super-atom, which Einstein predicted in 1925 and which took another 70 years to create in the lab.”

Over Peter’s 22 years at Swinburne, many young scientists have been part of his group of researchers. While he humbly avoids the word mentor, an estimate puts it at around 30

PhD students and 10 Postdoctoral Fellows who have had Peter as a role model.

“Three of the professors currently at Swinburne were Postdoctoral Fellows here and a number of our PhD students have gone on to take up senior positions around the world.”

Lessons in Physics, Maths and seizing opportunities weren’t the only good things to come from Grammar for Peter. He met his wife, Queen’s girl Kay (Berriman, 1960) at the Grammar Boat Race Ball in 1960.

“Kay and I will celebrate 60 years of marriage this year. She has been wonderfully supportive and encouraging all the way through.”

Still following his curiosity, Peter’s research work continues today in a variation of the field of laser spectroscopy studying a new state of matter called a time crystal, a structure that’s periodic in time rather than in space. This method has many potential future applications.

He hints that they are close to a result. Given Peter’s track record so far, this will be news worth keeping an eye out for. Watch this space.