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J O H N E M M E R S O N Physicist, barrister, bibliophile 4-4-1938 – 14-8-2014 John McLaren Emmerson QC, who has died aged 76, achieved distinction in three disparate fields: as an Oxford don in the pioneering days of particle physics; as a Melbourne barrister practising in the field of intellectual property; and as a collector of books and other papers from the Civil War of the 1640s in England (among them some of the first newspapers). He was widely revered and loved as a man of huge intellect (gently but rigorously deployed), wit, modesty, wisdom, and great kindness. At his funeral, a friend from schooldays, Stephen Charles QC, a retired judge and former president of the Australian Bar Association, quoted John’s pupil in chambers, Bruce Caine, on his awareness, when with John, of “being ïn the presence of greatness”. In conversation with others, he would usually be silent but alert while a matter was under debate – holding in his mind both or all sides of it in seeming equipoise. When – almost inevitably – others (however eminent, however clever) turned to him to resolve it, there would be a pause until, with a twinkle and the lifting of an expressive eyebrow, he would go to the heart of the matter in a few simple words (“Well, you’re both right,” he would sometimes start): words that by their clarity and quiet authority left nothing much else to be said. And nobody would be hurt or made to feel a fool. Born in 1938 to Keith Emmerson, a Melbourne solicitor and lecturer in taxation law, and Enid Druce, who had been the only woman in her generation at Melbourne University’s law school, he was followed in 1941 by a brother, David, who was to top that school and win the Supreme Court Prize in 1963 – a feat emulated by John 13 years later after a decade as a physicist in England. At the funeral David, who had come from London, said that John had always been his guiding star or candle. David’s children also spoke: Charles, an author and historian, to acknowledge his uncle’s
LIGHT BLUE - GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Tom Quirk, a friend from childhood and schooldays, later a colleague in research and writing at Oxford, had a chemistry set as a boy that inspired John to acquire one himself. At Glamorgan – which in 1947, his third year there, became part of Geelong Grammar School – and then in the senior school at Corio from 1950, John was consistenly dux. He even skipped IIIrd Form (Year 9), and in both 1954 and 1955 he obtained a general exhibition awarded to the top few in Victoria at Matriculation level, with an unbroken run of firstclass honours in two mathematics and three science subjects (sharing another exhibition for coming top of the State in biology) as well as getting a second in English literature (the headmaster, James Darling, gave the school a half-holiday to celebrate John’s final results). He acted in plays in supporting roles, was a sergeant in the cadet corps, and served as head librarian. At Melbourne University the run of top honours continued in physics, chemistry, zoology, and mathematics, and he graduated Bachelor – later Master – of Science, but also spread his wings into debating, acting, and editing for Trinity College, where he was a major scholar and became a resident tutor. During university vacations, he returned at times to Geelong Grammar to help with the teaching of then fast-evolving physics. In 1961, having been awarded a Shell Company scholarship to Oxford University, he entered Worcester College and began working for a doctorate under Denys Wilkinson in the department of nuclear physics. His thesis on “Inelastic scattering of intermediate energy nucleons” followed work by a team of six on the cyclotron at Harwell, the results being published in a series of articles with John as leading author. In the study of various short-lived particles, mesons, and excited states of the proton and neutron, a pattern was emerging to suggest a deeper structure, identified as partons or quarks. The team experimented with spark chambers and the new and powerful Nimrod proton synchrotron accelerator. He graduated DPhil (in Oxford parlance) in 1965, when he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition research
scholarship and elected by New College to a junior research fellowship. Blissful years followed: heady times in his field of high-energy physics; membership of a senior common room which enoyed brilliant, leisurely, after-dinner conversation, often with distinguished guests; reading parties in the French Alps; freedom from tutoring; the continuing beauties of Oxford, including the singing of the New College choir; and a stream of scientific papers with titles and contents comprehensible to few but their authors. John’s book, Symmetry Principles in Particle Physics, was published in 1972 by Oxford under its most scholarly imprint, the Clarendon Press. Various reasons have been adduced for John’s return to Melbourne late in 1971: a sense that only the United States and Moscow offered opportunities for further research, and neither attracted him; ancestral forces and love of Melbourne; a confession that he was getting bored by physics (which, after all, is not directly about people); perhaps a combination of such factors. He worked during his law studies as a patent attorney, was awarded the E.J.B.Nunn scholarship, and served his articles with John Rodd at Arthur Robinson & Co, being admitted to practise in March 1976 and going at once to the Bar and reading with John Batt. Working also in trade-practices law, he rapidly became a leader in intellectualproperty law with a particular interest in patents (especially pharmaceutical ones) and copyright, He took silk in 1985 and for many years shared chambers with Chris Jessup, now a judge of the Federal Court. An extraordinary memory, a gift for logical reasoning, an ability to grasp complex technology, a capacity for keeping many ideas in his head at once, evenness of temper (where a lesser advocate might have suffered fools ungladly), and a way with words that was at once economical and eloquent – all these combined to give Emmerson a rare authority in court. More than once he persuaded the High Court to overturn a judgement of the Full Federal Court. Katrina Howard, who had started as his junior in a biotechnology case in the early 1980s, quickly – after early terror at his intellect, as she confessed in a tribute at his funeral – became his greatest fan: he was “the cleverest, most logical, humorous, entertaining, and delightful man I have ever known”. His secretary Dorothy Yon said that she saw John lose his temper only once, and that was with Diners Club.
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benign influence; Chloe to read from A.A.Milne a passage about Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh which epitomized both John’s own reading to children and the enchantment with the world and sharing of knowledge that attend the quest for understanding.