School of Physics
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
Professor David Neilson :
Associate Professor Gordon Hays Godfrey M.A. B.Sc. F.A.A. was born in Sydney in 1892 and died there in 1979. He received his B.A. (First Class) in 1914, an M.A. (First Class) in 1919, and a B.Sc. in 1922, all from Sydney University. After teaching Physics at Sydney High Schools for some years Godfrey was associated with the Sydney Technical College, where from 1936-1948 he was a Lecturer, teaching both Optometry and Physics. He held positions at the University of New South Wales from 1948 until his retirement in 1958 at which time he had reached the position of Associate Professor of Physics.
Gordon Godfrey's research interests centred on Theoretical Physics, in particular Relativity and Optometry and he is known to have corresponded with Louis de Broglie on the nature of de Broglie waves. His Master's thesis was on the then infant field of Relativity.
Most of Godfrey's research ideas in those early years would have had to have come from books imported from Europe. There was apparently no emissary to Australia who could report directly on the new directions Physics was taking. In that sense Godfrey represents the earliest way of conducting Physics research in Australia and it is fitting that this Workshop which bears his name neatly represents the other extreme where proponents of new ideas can come to Australia for a week or two and mix freely and informally with their counterparts here. Long--range jumbo jets have made it only a twelve hours non--stop journey to Los Angeles and a mere eight hours to Tokyo. During the Workshop participants were able to use the School of Physics workstation's electronic mail service to communicate instantanteously to colleagues around the world. Given Australia's relative geographical isolation the impact that email and the FAX are having on our way of doing things is proportionately much greater than elsewhere.
Gordon Godfrey's major concern was that physics be properly understood by teachers. He willed the majority of his Estate to set up the Gordon Godfrey Bequest for the advancement of theoretical physics at the University of New South Wales.
Professor Herbert Bolton :
In the AP for December 1979, 16, pl69, J. F. McConnell wrote an obituary of Gordon H. Godfrey formerly of the Physics Department, University of NSW and mentioned his MA thesis of Sydney University on Special Relativity, dated 1919. I wrote to Professor McConnell, expressing the hope that this thesis, and perhaps other papers of Godfrey, could be preserved for the historical study of physics in Australia. It is a pleasure to record the outcome. Godfrey's MA thesis was handwritten and Professor Heinz Hora of the Physics Department, UNSW has had it photocopied and bound and has asked me to send it to the Basser Library of The Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. I am delighted to do this and I thought that a public acknowledgment would not only thank McConnell and Hora but also draw the attention of all physicists to the need to be continuously on the alert for historical material and to see that it gets into good archival hands. There are various places where such material can go. The largest source is Australian Archives which with its main repository at Canberra and Branches in major cities contains official government papers. Most Universities have archives and the Basser Library takes archival material about science in Australia.
Before sending it to the Basser Library I was curious enough to read Godfrey's thesis. My comments cannot be a full discussion on the thesis, but it does appear to be a candidate for the first scholarly discussion in Australia on Relativity. Godfrey does not mention his thesis supervisor and the thesis is based on the interpretation of classic references. Indeed, in 1919, there would be little chance for an Australian scholar to have visited one of the European research centres.
My understanding is that Godfrey was trying to interpret Einstein's two postulates of Special Relativity. He starts with a discussion of classical physics that there is a preferred frame of reference and shows how this view must give way, using the Lorentz transformation, to the concept that all inertial frames are equally acceptable. The physical problems are those of optics and Maxwell's equations. Godfrey has various inverted commas statements which he says are from Einstein. Nowhere in the thesis does Godfrey give any references to Einstein but his quotation is similar to the standard translation of Einstein's 1905 article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" which most physicists will know from the Dover book "The Principle of Relativity". Godfrey's quoted references are Richardson's Electron Theory of Matter, Jeans' Electricity and Magnetism, Maxwell's Electricity and Magnetism, Cunningham's Principles of Relativity, Silberstein's Theory of Relativity, Drude's Theory of Optics, Bell's Co ordinate Geometry and Thomson's Recent Researches.
In summary, we see in the thesis Godfrey as a physicist attempting to understand Special Relativity in a geographically isolated environment. At the end of the thesis is bound the obituary by Emeritus Professor C. J. Milner which brings a further connection to the story. In searching for the source of Godfrey's quotations I looked up Einstein's popular book on Relativity first published in 1916 but unlikely to have been available in Australia in 1919; the English translation was published in 1920 by R. W. Lawson who was interned in Germany during the first World War and who thanks a colleague S. R. Milner, the father of C. J. Milner.
Godfrey's other interest was in Classical Optics and he published several articles in the Australian Journal of Physics; on diffraction, 1 (1948) 1 17, 7 (1954) 389 399, on multilayer films, 10 (1957) 1 15.
Emeritus Professor Christopher J. Milner :
Gordon Hay Godfrey died on 16 September, aged 86 A Founder Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics, he was appointed Associate Professor of Applied Physics (and Acting Head of School) at UNSW in 1951. Although he retired as Associate Professor in 1958, he continued as a full time lecturer, then with gradually decreasing involvement, as a part time teacher in the School of Physics well into the 1970s.
He was my deputy and executive assistant when l was Head of School. No one could have had a more faithful deputy, or a more trustworthy confidant.
Godfrey made several contributions in advanced study and research. His MA work led to lifetime keen interest in relativity theory and electromagnetic theory: the former flowered in the higher degree work of Simon Prokhovnik which Godfrey supervised, while the latter led to published work, in the 1930s, on atmospheric radio propagation, and, in the 1950s, on the reflectance characteristics of multilayer coatings. The latter work has been praised by Professor Hora, now Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics, who rates it as equal in standard to that of his eminent colleagues then at Zeiss' in Germany.
Subsequent to his retirement, Godfrey held for a time appointment as an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales; and, until his death, that of Honorary Associate of its School of Physics. The sympathy of the University and its staff is again expressed to Mrs Mable Godfrey.
D.Neilson@unsw.edu.au