Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 14, Issue 2, 1 October 1981, Page 123

Research Notes

Dr Karl H. Rensch of the Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, is preparing manuscripts by Valery Lallour and Monsigneur Hilarion Alphonse Fraysse (1842—1905) for publication. Lallour’s five volumes of journal, observations and a Kanak-French dictionary were compiled during his stay from 1843 to 1849 in the Marquesas Islands and Fraysse’s ‘Dictionnaire Frangais-Uvea et Ate’ was a product of his term as Apostolic Vicar of New Caledonia from 1880 to 1905.

From 25-29 May 1981 a major international symposium entitled ‘Scientific Colonialism 1800-1930: a Cross-cultural Comparison’, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Melbourne University, was held at the latter university. The Library was represented by Dr Michael E. Hoare who read a paper on ‘New Zealand science and the Australian connection, 1800-1930’, which drew heavily on the Library’s and other manuscript sources in the field. Other presenters of papers who have used the Turnbull’s resources in recent years were Professor Lawrence Badash (University of California, Santa Barbara) on ‘New Zealand’s influence on Rutherford’s scientific development’ and Professor Lewis Pyenson (Universite de Montreal) on ‘Geophysics, geopolitics and colonial expansion in the South Pacific, 1900-1930’. Altogether twenty papers were delivered and commentary provided on the New Zealand experience by a number of invited scholars very conversant with the Library’s holdings of scientific archives, rare books and art materials, among whom were Professor T. G. Vallance (University of Sydney, international historian of geology); Professor Wallace Kirsop (Monash University, Australasian bibliographical history); Miss Joan T. Radford (Melbourne University, history of chemistry in Australasia) and Dr Brian Wearing (University of Canterbury, history of the Geological Survey of New Zealand). It is expected that the proceedings of the symposium will be published during 1982.