Ask Queensland's Chief Scientist Dr Geoff Garrett AO who his hero is and he will quote Lord Kelvin.

"We don't have all the resources we need and so we must think". 

As well as great scientists such as Lord Kelvin, there was his science teacher also who inspired Dr Garrett, a Cambridge graduate in metalurgy who has led two of the world's major national research institutions - CSIR in South Africa (1995-2000) and the CSIRO in Australia (2001-2008).

OUTtakes: Teachers Make a Difference from Big Science Now on Vimeo. 

Now Dr Garrett's teachers didn't have to discover Absolute Zero, like Lord Kelvin, but they did a good job of making science interesting enough to inspire Dr Garrett to study science which turns out to be a significant contribution. Dr Garrett served on the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council for eight years.

You try explaining Absolute Zero, for instance. Lord Kelvin was the first to realise there are temperatures below zero.

Absolute temperatures are expressed as units of kelvin in his honour.

The Irish physicist engineer did mathematical analysis of electricity which helped unify the emerging discipline of physics by inventing the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics in the mid 1800s. 

 

Geoff Garrett on studying science 

 

Geoff Garrett's bio / Speeches, publications, papers

Geoff Garrett was appointed Queensland Chief Scientist to the Queensland Government in January 2011. Formerly he was, for eight years, Chief Executive and member of the Board of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. CSIRO is one of the world’s largest and most diverse national research organisations, with close to 6500 staff across 55 sites in Australia and an annual turnover exceeding Aus$1 billion.

 Prior to joining CSIRO, Geoff led South Africa’s national science agency, the CSIR, as President and Chief Executive from 1995, following five years as Executive Vice President: Operations.  He was named South Africa’s ‘Boss of the Year’ in 1998, and ‘Engineer of the Year’ by the South African Society of Professional Engineers in 1999.

Educated in the United Kingdom, Geoff is a graduate of Cambridge University where he completed a doctorate in metallurgy.  He was also a university boxing blue. He then took up a lecturing position at the University of Cape Town. Prior to joining the CSIR in 1986 to head up South Africa’s National Institute for Materials Research, he was Professor and Head of Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He held visiting positions at Brown University (RI, USA), and at Oxford and Sheffield Universities. His research interests centred around the fracture and fatigue behaviour of engineering materials.

On joining CSIRO, Dr Garrett and his team undertook a program of major strategic and operational transformation, seeking to achieve greater focus through their Flagship Programs on the major scientific challenges for Australia, including water, clean energy, health and climate change, and opportunities in minerals and mining, manufacturing, new food technologies and ocean science.  Key to this was developing stronger partnerships across the innovation system, and growing the organisation’s impact through a more unified ‘One-CSIRO’ approach.  In December 2008 CSIRO’s Flagship Programs received the top Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Sector Management.

Geoff is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Royal Society of South Africa and the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He served on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council in Australia for eight years. From 2002 he also served as a founder Principal and subsequently as an Executive Committee member of the Global Research Alliance, a group that brings together some of the world’s most significant R&D organisations, spanning five continents.   

Dr Garrett is a recipient of the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society through science, and was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s 2008 ‘True Leaders’.  In June 2008 he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

During 2010, Geoff was a part-time Visiting Fellow in Innovation with the Australian National University (ANU) and is the co-author with Sir Graeme Davies, formerly Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, of the recently published “Herding Cats - Being advice to aspiring academic and research leaders” (Triarchy Press, UK). He lectures in leadership and change management and provides coaching support in these areas to academics and to senior officers of the Australian Public Service. He has also been engaged with an International Review for the US National Science Foundation of the major, 24 country Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, IODP, and in September 2010 was appointed Chairman of ANZIC, the Australia New Zealand IODP Consortium. 

Geoff is married to Janet, and they have four sons, Ben, Matt, David and Luke.  His interests include fishing and tennis, and his one (so far!) grandchild, Liam.