Latin mottos and a pioneering astrophysicist

When I ventured up to the observatory at Mt. Stromlo, a veritable jewel in the crown of the Australian National University (where I’m currently a Visiting Researcher) little did I expect to find anything written about the University of Reading in the visitor’s display. The walnut desk of Pioneer Director of the Solar Observatory, Walter Geoffrey Duffield, however, encouraged closer inspection, especially as it reminded me of our mock-up of the desk of Professor Percy Ure, our Pioneer Professor of Classics at University of Reading, in the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology. And amazingly, Professor Duffield was tempted to Canberra to take up that directorial role from none other than University College, Reading, as it was then called, where he had served from 1913-1923 as Professor of Physics. After the observatory tour, as I climbed higher up the mountain, I discovered the great man’s grave, where he is buried also with Doris, his wife, and Joan, his daughter, who survived ’til the ripe old age of 104, just a few years ago. The simple wooden cross, with its Latin inscription, Per ardua ad astra, ‘Through struggle to the stars’, however, clearly refers to him and his work. After all, he & his family are the only modern persons buried on that mountain: unlike his daughter he died at an early age, in 1929.

Later that evening, while seated in St. John’s (Anglican) Church, Reid, just around the corner from the Australian War Memorial, my eyes began to wander & set themselves upon a distinctive plaque also with a Latin motto. And amazingly it commemorates the same W.G. Duffield, yet with a different and yet more appropriate Latin motto, Arduus ad solem. I say ‘more appropriate’ because he was in fact a solar scientist and a solar observatory director, thus spent his short life ’striving towards the sun’. I discussed it with Canon Paul Black, now Rector of that church, who had indeed buried Joan Duffield on the mountain a few years back, although the plaque was placed in the church long before his time, in 1954.

A small amount of research later, however, it became clear to me how and why these mottoes were chosen to honour Duffield. Per ardua ad astra is the motto of the Royal and Commonwealth Air Forces, thus a reflection of his time in service in the Air Force. Arduus ad solem is the motto of none other than Victoria University of Manchester, formerly Owens College and now part of the University of Manchester, where Duffield earned his PhD. The sun is emblazoned on that University’s shield and Duffield certainly took its message into his heart.

Professor Amy C. Smith

Professor Amy Smith gives prestigious Trendall Lecture

C.W Götzloff, Antiquities by a Balcony Overlooking the Gulf of Naples, 1826

This term Professor Amy C. Smith is one of 18 international scholars (and 3 Classicists) selected as to be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University (ANU), in that nation’s capital, Canberra.This week, however, she has been invited to Melbourne to deliver the prestigious Trendall Lecture, at the A.D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Latrobe University. She will deliver her lecture, entitled ‘1766 and All That! Winckelmann and the Study of Greek Vases’, in the State Library of Victoria at 6:30 pm on Thursday, 16 November.

The Trendall Centre is named for Professor A.D. (Dale) Trendall (1909-1995), around whose library, archives & collections it is built. A classical historian and archaeologist, with particular expertise in the Greek art of South Italy, Prof. Trendall amassed perhaps the finest library of Classical Archaeology in the Southern hemisphere. After a long and distinguished career as Professor of Greek and Chair of Archaeology at University of Sydney, then Master of University House at ANU, in 1960 he retired to Latrobe University (in Melbourne), where he worked as Resident Fellow for many years, continuing his groundbreaking work on the attribution of tens of thousands of vases made by Greeks in South Italy, and maintaining warm working relationships with international scholars including Annie Ure, Curator of Classics@Reading’s Ure Collection until her death in 1976. Professor Smith is the Ure Museum’s current Curator.

The Trendall Lecture is one of two annual lectures honouring and named for this influential scholar. The second, sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, of which Trendall was a Foundation Fellow, is delivered in conjunction with the conference of the Australasian Society of Classical Studies.