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When Adrien Albert died in Canberra on 29th December 1989, Australia lost an outstanding son. Not only had he introduced and firmly established the discipline of medicinal chemistry within this country but, in so doing, he had contributed greatly to research in heterocyclic chemistry.

Alan Walsh was the originator and developer of the atomic absorption method of chemical analysis, which revolutionized quantitative analysis in the 1950s and 1960s.

Alex Boden was a manufacturing chemist who succeeded in that most difficult of industries; through his texts, he was an exceptionally successful educational author; and he was a publisher who relished editing, a man of some privacy and reticence who made deep and continuing friendships across the world, a singularly devoted husband, parent and grandparent, and a philanthropist in an age when philanthropy had almost dropped out of sight. His life was one of remarkable richness, variety, originality and generosity. It is unlikely that there has been another Australian of his kind.

Alexander George Ogston, the first of six children, was born on 30 January 1911, in Bombay, India, where his father, Walter Henry Ogston, of firmly Aberdonian ancestry, was a businessman for twenty years. His mother, nee Josephine Elizabeth Carter, fourteen years younger than her husband, trained at the Froebel Educational Institute as a teacher, won silver and gold medals at University College, London, studying biological sciences, but married before completing her degree.

Ted Ringwood was born in Kew, an inner Melbourne suburb, on 19 April 1930, an only child in a family which identified strongly with Australia and with Melbourne in particular. Both his parents were Australian, but his mother's parents had come to Australia as Presbyterian emigrants from Ulster.

With the passing of Alfred Gottschalk on October 4th 1973, at Tübingen, West Germany, in his 80th year, there ended a life of extraordinary dedication to research in biochemistry. He died acclaimed as the leading authority in the ever-expanding field of glycoprotein research.

Tony Perry was one of Australia’s most outstanding researchers in fluid mechanics, particularly in the study of turbulent fluid motion. He was a gifted lecturer, devoted supervisor to twenty PhD students, and a passionate and enthusiastic influence on numerous colleagues around the world.

When Archie McIntyre died peacefully in St Vincent’s Hospital in Launceston, Tasmania on 20 July 2002, Australia lost one of its most significant contributors to the development of modern neuroscience. Less well known, perhaps, because of his self-effacing manner, than eminent peers like Jack Eccles, he was nevertheless a major driving force behind Australia’s excellence in neurophysiological research.

Arthur John Birch AC CMG FRS FAA was one of the great organic chemists of the twentieth century. He held chairs at the Universities of Sydney and Manchester and at the Australian National University in Canberra, and was President of the ¾«¶«ÊÓƵ from 1982 to 1986. His outstanding research contributions include the Birch reduction of aromatic compounds by sodium and ethanol in liquid ammonia, his polyketide theory of the biosynthesis of natural products, and his studies of synthetic applications of diene iron tricarbonyl complexes.

Arthur Robert Hogg was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 25 November, 1903. He became a student at the Royal Melbourne Technical College, then at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated BSc in 1923, with first-class honours in chemistry and the Dixson Scholarship, and as MSc in 1925, with the Kernot Scholarship. He went first to the Broken Hill Associated Smelters at Port Pirie, South Australia, quickly to become Assistant Superintendent of Research, a post he held until 1929.