President’s Update May 2019

How should we celebrate 25 years of Australian Science Communicators?

It’s 1994.  We’ve all just started exploring this newfangled thing called the ‘world wide web’ with our brand new Netscape browser.  Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert grace our cinema screens for the first time.

In science it’s the year Comet shoemaker-Levy 9 smashes in Jupiter, the ‘fossil tree’ the Wollemi Pine is found growing in the bush not far from Sydney, and the Green Flourescent Protein is first introduced and lights up in a different animal – the C.elegans nematode worm.

There were hundreds of people working as science communicators across scientific and higher education institutions in Australia at this time, although the term “science communication” itself was not in common use.  There was a sense of isolation, and a move to establish a network for people working in these diverse roles.  There’s a great recount of the birth of ASC, and this history of science communication in Australia in this wonderful article by Toss Gascoine and Jenni Metcalf.  In September 1994, the first AGM was held and Julian Cribb, then a journalist at The Australian, was elected the first President.

So, how should we celebrate this milestone?  If you have any suggestions please get in contact with me directly, and we’ll keep members posted as to what plans we have in store.

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