This service is, of course, primarily a time to remember with fondness John Carver the man, and members of his family will be doing that shortly. But the service would be incomplete without reference, however brief and itself incomplete, to John Carver the distinguished physicist and academic, and a scientific statesman on both the national and international stage.

The family has given me the honour and privilege of recalling some of the highlights of his long and very distinguished career of service to science and to the nation. Many of you, more familiar than I with particular aspects of his life, would want to put a different emphasis on this, or on that. Mine must necessarily be an idiosyncratic account, if for no other reason than its brevity.

John, a 1949 graduate of Sydney University with first class Honours in physics, was one of the early recipients of an ANU postgraduate scholarship. As such, he joined the group of Australia's most able young graduates in their pilgrimage to the UK to gain their higher degrees. For John the destination was Cambridge, and the topic of his research was nuclear physics. This was as it should be, for the initial focus of Mark Oliphant's newly established Research School at the ANU was to be nuclear and particle physics.

Four years later, in 1953, he was awarded his PhD for a thesis entitled, simply, Nuclear Photodisintegration. Some 20 years later his was to be awarded a Doctor of Science degree from Cambridge in recognition of his distinguished research in physics. By then, as we shall see, his interests had broadened well beyond his initial speciality of nuclear physics.

With his degree in his pocket, John returned to the ANU, as he was required to do, to take up an appointment as a Research Fellow in the new Department of Nuclear Physics, headed by Ernest Titterton. Some 8 years later, now 34, with a tenured position as a Senior Fellow in that department, Oliphant suggested he apply for the Elder Chair of Physics at the University of Adelaide. He was, of course, very young for such an appointment at a time when full professorships were few and far between. Mr Murdoch's paper The NEWS (his only paper then) announced his arrival with the words "Professor John Carver - - is very much in the order of modern scientists. He is a nuclear specialist, alert, dedicated - and very young". (My emphasis.)

John Carver, though, was well up to the task. Showing the same leadership he was to bring later, with such distinction, to the ANU, he set about building on the solid foundations laid by his predecessor Leonard Huxley. Pursuing research in nuclear physics in his new department was not an option. But John, ever the pragmatist, realized that the proximity of the then Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) provided a unique opportunity to enter a new field, if he could only capitalize on it. That field was atmospheric physics. He might be able to use rockets, or even perhaps - more ambitious still, satellites - to sample the atmosphere using WRE's facilities. But it would require a switch of fields for him - from nuclear physics to atomic physics.

So he set to work. Three years later he published his first paper from the work in Adelaide in his new field. There followed many papers from his newly established group on laboratory- and rocket-based experiments related to atmospheric physics, many published in collaboration with his colleagues or his students of which he was immensely proud. Then, to cut a long story short, only three years later came the excitement of seeing Australia's first (and sadly only) satellite, WRESAT, launched at Woomera atop a Redstone rocket. With this historic event, brought about in conjunction with scientists and technologists at WRE, Australia became only the third country to have successfully launched its own satellite from its own site. It was a tremendous achievement, and one that captured the imagination of the press Australia wide. But in parallel with this there was a steady output of scientific work not only from his group but from other established research groups in his flourishing department.

With it, too, came John's increasing involvement with national and international scientific affairs. In 1970, three years after the successful launch of WRESAT, he was elected to the Chair of the UN Scientific and Technical Sub-Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, a post he held for the next 25 years. In recognition of that quarter-of-a-century service to international science, he was awarded the UN's COSPAR Medal in 2000 for "significant contributions towards the promotion of cooperative international scientific endeavours". I should like to read you a short extract from the citation for that medal, which was presented to him at a ceremony in Warsaw in July of that year:

That was a great but well deserved tribute - borne out, indeed, by the length of his chairmanship!

And at home that same "quiet and skilful diplomacy" was soon to be seen in action at the ANU, for in 1978 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Research School of Physical Sciences. His academic skills outside his own discipline had, by then, been well honed in Adelaide, with appointments as Dean of the Faculty of Science and Chair of the University's professorial board, among others, having been added to his responsibilities.

Now back in Canberra he began what was to be his most influential period as an academic physicist. With great skill, acumen, and foresight he steadily remodelled and expanded his Research School at a time when academic physics throughout Australia began to come under great pressure. Seeing over the heads of most of us, he saw that the defence of his discipline was best achieved by demonstrating in deed and word that physics had its part to play in the real world through its link with technology and engineering. The deeds were the introduction of two new departments with links to both; the words were the renaming of his School to the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering. Jim Williams, the Head of one of the two new departments, will add his reflections on those times in a few minutes.

Of course, John Carver had to defend his School not only against the prevailing winds of the day, but also against competitive claims within the University. How successful he was in the latter is perhaps best encapsulated in the words of Ian Ross who then, as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, was defending the University's finances. In a speech at a dinner in honour of John's retirement he said:

You must make allowance for some exaggeration on behalf of a DVC protecting the university's finances, but you get the message!

Two things reflect the effectiveness and distinction of his Directorship of the School. The first is the length of his occupancy of that position. His appointment was twice extended beyond its initial five years, both with the very strong support of the School itself. The second, standing as a permanent memorial to his Directorship, is the John Carver Building, opened in 1994. Maybe it is also one of the fruits he obtained from pulling that tree over to his side!

On his retirement as Director in 1992, John Carver's service to the University was still not quite at an end. For two years he served as Acting DVC and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies. Then, finally, he became his own man, pursuing his own scientific interests as a Visiting Fellow in his old School.

As I said earlier, his years back in Canberra from 1978 saw John playing an increasingly influential role nationally, while continuing his important UN commitments. Among his other appointments, he served as Deputy Chair of the Prime Minister's Science & Technology Council and Chair of both the Anglo-Australian Telescope Board and the Radio Research Board. The list goes on and on. Australia recognised his achievements and service by conferring on him Membership of the Order of Australia; the scientific community recognised them by electing him to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

How will those who knew him as a colleague and a friend remember him? We shall remember the courage with which he and Molly together faced and conquered his illness with such dignity and patience over these recent years and months. We shall remember him as an able leader of men with a warm and friendly personality; with a smile that one could easily kindle; and with a knack of getting his own way through logic, patience and tact. At this service we salute the passing of a friend for whom we had great affection and admiration, and one who made an outstanding contribution to his country.

Bob Crompton

7 January 2005