Leslie H. Martin

Sir Leslie Harold Martin, (21 December 1900 – 1 February 1983) was an Australian physicist. He was one of the 24 Founding Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and had a significant influence on the structure of higher education in Australia as chairman of the Australian Universities Commission from 1959 until 1966. He was Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne from 1945 to 1959, and Dean of the Faculty of Military Studies and Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra from 1967 to 1970. He was the Defence Scientific Adviser and chairman of the Defence Research and Development Policy Committee from 1948 to 1968, and a member of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 1958 to 1968. In this role he was an official observer at several British nuclear weapons tests in Australia.

Early life Leslie Harold Martin was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray on 21 December 1900, to Henry Richard Martin, a railway worker, and his wife Esther (Ettie) Emily, née Tutty. He attended Flemington State School and won a Junior State Scholarship to Melbourne High School for his final years of secondary schooling in 1917 and 1918. His mathematics teacher, Miss Julia Flynn, encouraged him, and he won a Victorian Education Department Senior Government Scholarship in 1918.

Martin was awarded the Fred Knight Research Scholarship in 1923, which allowed him to continue his research with Laby. He earned extra money as a demonstrator in the Department of Natural Philosophy, and he lectured in the evenings at the Working Men's College. Laby nominated him for an 1851 Research Fellowship and a free trip to England to study physics under Ernest Rutherford at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish laboratory. and the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He was awarded an International Research Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation, allowing him to stay on into 1927. for his investigation of the Auger effect, the emission of electrons after ionisation by X-rays. and second-in-charge of the Natural Philosophy Department. In January 1942, he was seconded to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney to develop secret valves for a Radio Direction Finder.

Other work The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research created the Atomic Physics Section in 1947 led by Martin. In 1948 he became a member of the Interim Council of the Australian National University. and he was knighted to honour his outstanding contributions to science in the 1957 New Year Honours. He was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the University of Melbourne in 1957.

The links between his academic activities and his defence activities led him to work for the establishment of the RAAF College at Point Cook as an affiliated college of the University of Melbourne in 1961. In 1967 he became the chairman of the government's Tertiary Education (Services' Cadet Colleges) Committee that began planning for the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). The institute is interdisciplinary and has as its key objectives: to train the next generation of leaders of Australia's tertiary education in the strategic management of their institutions; to provide a forum in which public policy makers, public and private sector institutions and national and international experts can explore, assess and anticipate the changing national and international environment in which tertiary education operates; and to support its educational programs with scholarship and research.

Sir Leslie Martin Prize In 1971 Duntroon established the Sir Leslie Martin Prize which has been awarded every year until 1985, and from then at ADFA since 1986. The prize is awarded for "distinguished performance by a First Year Officer Cadet in First Year Physics" from all streams, that is, all Physics, Engineering and Arts students who take Physics I.

Publications The high frequency K series absorption spectrum of erbium. Royal Society of Victoria. Proceedings., 35 (1922), 164–169. (With E.C. Stoner) The absorption of x-rays. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 107 (1925), 312–331. Some measurements on the absorption of x-rays of long wave-length. Cambridge Philosophical Society. Proceedings., 23 (1927), 783–793. The efficiency of K series emission by K ionised atoms. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 115 (1927), 420–442. (With K.C. Lang) X-ray absorption coefficients in the range 0.3 to 2.0 Å. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 137 (1932), 199–216. (With K.C. Lang) The thermal conductivity of water. Physical Society, London. Proceedings., 45 (1933), 523–529. (With W.G. Kannuluik) Conduction of heat in powders. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 141 (1933), 144–158. (With W.G. Kannuluik) The thermal conductivity of some gases at 0 °C. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 144 (1934), 496–513. (With J.C. Bower and T.H. Laby) Ionization in gases by x-rays as shown by expansion chamber observations. Sydney. University. Cancer Research Committee. Journal., 6 (1934), 131–143. (With J.C. Bower and T.H. Laby) Auger effect in argon. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 148 (1935), 40–46. (With F.F.H. Eggleston) The Auger effect in xenon and krypton. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 158 (1937), 46–54. (With F.F.H. Eggleston) The angular distribution of photoelectrons from the K shell. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 162 (1937), 95–110. (With A.A. Townsend) The beta-ray spectrum of RaE. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A, 170 (1939), 190–205.