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Australian Academy of Science Biographical Memoirs of Deceased Fellows Originally prepared for publication as part of Bright Sparcs by the Australian Science Archives Project. |
Douglas Geoffrey Lampard was born in Sydney on 4 May 1927 at the
Royal Women's Hospital, Paddington. He was the only child of Edward
Geoffrey Lampard and Violet Evangeline Lampard, nee Moxon. Both
of Doug's parents were the children of Anglican clergy, his father
being the son of Archdeacon Lampard, of Lismore, and his mother
the daughter of Archdeacon Moxon, of Grafton. Doug's father graduated
in engineering from the University of Sydney in 1928 after serving
in the Australian Flying Corps during the First World War. He
became Chief Airbrake Engineer with the New South Wales Railways.
Doug's mother had trained as a kindergarten teacher.
Doug's early years were spent in Sydney's northern suburbs, initially
in Chatswood and then in Gordon. He grew up in a home with modest
but comfortable living standards, under the guidance of well educated
and caring parents. As he grew older, he showed an absorbing interest
in mechanical and electrical equipment, and great skills in the
use of workshop tools.
Doug attended Chatswood and Gordon Primary Schools and he was
selected to attend Artarmon Opportunity School in its second intake
of pupils. From there he attended North Sydney Boys' High School,
a selective and high-achieving school, from 1940 to 1944. At high
school, Doug showed exceptional ability in physics and chemistry,
especially in practical work. He was a nonconformist and concentrated
on those activities of school life that took his interest. These
did not include the Army Cadet Corps, which had a high profile
during the war years. Nor was he interested in sport. The school
was ruled by Robert Harvey, a famous headmaster at the time, who
provided for his students a liberal curriculum including Latin,
Greek, French, German, History, Music and Economics, as well as
English, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Doug always appreciated
and respected this broad education. Harvey was a strict disciplinarian
and all school days were prefaced by assembly, sometimes with
a homily from the headmaster about any perceived slackening of
effort. The assembled students then marched off to classes to
the stirring strains of 'Colonel Bogey' or a similar marching
tune. Doug was responsible for the sound amplification system
and one of his hobbies was tinkering with this system to improve
the quality of the sound. On his final day of school before sitting
for the Leaving Certificate examinations, Doug substituted his
own music and played 'When the saints go marching in'. This caused
a minor riot and brought on the wrath of the headmaster.
At home, Doug built and repaired audio systems, power supplies
and radios. Carpentry was another hobby. He became a projectionist
at Gordon Cinema and an enthusiastic follower of traditional jazz,
although he refused to learn to play any musical instruments.
Sydney Harbour was a great attraction and he regularly sailed
in VJ races on Middle Harbour.
Doug began his university education at the University of Sydney
in March 1945, enrolling in the Faculty of Engineering. In those
days, the first two years of an engineering degree were the same
for all branches of engineering. After two years as an engineering
student, Doug decided to work for a year and he joined CSIR (now
CSIRO), in the Electrotechnology Division of the National Standards
Laboratory. He was employed as a Technical Assistant, working
on microwave measurement techniques. (He had previously worked
in this Division as a summer student while enrolled in Engineering).
The exposure he had to research during this period convinced him
that his scientific interests were in mathematics and physics,
and on returning to the University of Sydney in 1948 he transferred
to the Faculty of Science. He graduated with first-class honours
in physics in May 1951.
Doug enjoyed his undergraduate years. He had a wide circle of
friends studying engineering, medicine and science. He became
interested in physiology and attended lectures given to medical
students. He developed his interest in traditional jazz music,
learning to play the washboard and then the banjo. He became an
enthusiastic member of the Sydney University Film Society. His
interests in electrical equipment and jazz music led to his involvement
as a projectionist, and as a presenter of recorded jazz music.
Doug returned to the National Standards Laboratory, after graduation
in February 1951, as a Research Officer. He worked in Dr David
Hollway's group on K-band microwave spectroscopy. This work was
written up for an MSc degree with the University of Sydney in
a thesis entitled 'The development of a microwave spectroscope
and some problems connected with its sensitivity', and the degree
was awarded in May 1952. In June 1952 Doug was awarded a CSIRO
overseas studentship for two years, to attend the University of
Cambridge. He studied in the Electrical Engineering Department
under the supervision of Professor E.B. Moullin, his PhD thesis
being entitled 'Some theoretical and experimental investigations
of random electrical fluctuations'. Random electrical fluctuations
(or electrical noise) were of central interest to the research
staff in the National Standards Laboratory, as they often limited
the accuracy of electrical measurements. He was awarded the PhD
degree by the University of Cambridge in November 1954.
Doug's two years in Cambridge were remarkably productive and busy
ones. It was very unusual (and still is) for anyone to complete
a PhD in two years. His research led to several seminal publications
on electrical noise and stochastic process. His college was Corpus
Christi which he chose because of a family association, his paternal
grandfather, Archdeacon Lampard, having studied Greek and mathematics
there in the latter part of the nineteenth century. While at Cambridge,
Doug served as a member of the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research (DSIR) Committee on Atmospheric Noise at the request
of the chairman, J.A. Ratcliffe of the Cavendish Laboratory. He
also taught mathematics at Cambridge Technical College in the
evenings, to help finance his studies. The interest he had shown
in physiology at the University of Sydney developed further when
he attended lecture courses on 'The Electrical Activity of the
Nervous System', given in the Physiology Department at Cambridge
by Professor Alan Hodgkin and Dr William Rushton.
Doug was then invited to spend three months (October 1954 - January
1955) as a visiting lecturer in the Electrical Engineering Department
at Columbia University, New York, where he taught a postgraduate
course in 'Stochastic Processes and Noise Theory'. He was offered
a position in this department, which he declined because of his
commitments to CSIRO. He returned to Australia and to the National
Standards Laboratory in March 1955. On being reappointed as a
Research Officer, his supervisor (Dr Fred Lehany) noted that 'Lampard
has made excellent use of his studentship and has established
himself widely as a successful research worker in the general
field of information theory and the statistical treatment of signals
in the presence of noise'.
Following Doug's return to the National Standards Laboratory,
he became involved in calculating the capacitance of a succession
of geometrical shapes that Dr Mel Thompson believed could be accurately
constructed and defined so that their physical dimensions could
be measured with sufficient accuracy. The results of some of these
calculations on quite different cross-sectional profiles agreed
with each other so closely that the suspicion arose that a general
expression for their capacitance existed that was independent
of cross-sectional profile. Doug discovered this identity, and
it appeared in a paper entitled 'A new theorem in electrostatics
with applications to calculable standards of capacitance', published
in the Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers
in 1957. This paper described what was probably Doug's most
important single scientific work. It ultimately led to the development
of a capacitance standard with an accuracy of about 1 part in
100 million, which was more than 100 times more accurate than
the best capacitance standard at that time. This allowed the standard
ohm to be redefined. In the field of electrical measurements,
it was a major advance. The theorem (which is usually referred
to in texts on electrostatics as the Lampard Capacitance Theorem)
became the mainstay for establishing the absolute SI unit of resistance
in every national standards laboratory for many decades. Doug
was awarded the Heaviside Premium by the Institution of Electrical
Engineers, London, in 1957 for this work. In 1965, Doug and Mel
Thompson were jointly awarded the Albert F. Sperry Medal by the
Instrument Society of America for their work on calculable standards
of capacitance.
In the midst of this activity, Doug and Dr Ian Harvey were building
a 'probability distribution analyser'. This device was to be used
for investigations on random electrical noise. Nowadays electronic
measurements of the probability density of amplitudes or of time
intervals are commonplace, but at that time it was completely
novel. Its key component was an electrostatic memory constructed
on the screen of a normal cathode-ray tube so as to provide 64
channels, each of 15-bit capacity. Doug teamed up with Peter Bishop
and Bill Levick in the Physiology Department at the University
of Sydney to use this machine for the measurement of the probability
density of the time intervals between successive nerve impulses
in the firing pattern of retinal ganglion cells. At the time,
it was believed that sensory information was encoded in the fine
temporal structure of neuronal discharge. This first measurement
of such temporal detail, reported in Nature in 1961, caused
much excitement and stimulated many overseas laboratories to attempt
similar measurements.
In August 1960, Doug was appointed to a newly created Chair of
Electrical Engineering at the University of New South Wales, specifically
in the field of communications engineering. It was to be a short
appointment as he resigned in August 1961. Doug believed that
he was not given the freedom and independence appropriate for
a professorial appointment to develop teaching and research in
his area of responsibility. When the issue could not be resolved
to his satisfaction with senior university officers, he returned
to the Division of Electrotechnology in CSIRO, from which he had
been on long-term leave, as a Principal Research Officer. This
experience was a painful one for Doug but it was not without rewards.
He attracted around him some recent graduates in engineering and
mathematics (Nhan Levan, Tony Stuart, David Montgomery, David
Robinson and Stephen Redman) who were enrolled for Master's degrees.
They all responded positively to Doug's enthusiasm and research
guidance, and formed a lively research group. Two of them, Levan
and Redman, were to follow Doug to Monash University and become
his first PhD students. Doug also enjoyed his interactions with
these research students very much, and this experience convinced
him that his future research should be conducted in a university
environment.
Doug was appointed to the foundation Chair of Electrical Engineering
at Monash University in August 1962. Prior to taking up this appointment,
he spent three months in the Engineering School at Purdue University,
Indiana. This was one of the largest engineering schools in the
USA and his experience there, as well as at the University of
New South Wales, were important in developing his ideas on how
to create a modern department of electrical engineering. When
he arrived at Monash at the end of 1962, the university had been
in existence for only a short time, and the most advanced engineering
undergraduates were in their second year. This was a splendid
opportunity for Doug to work in a new university that had to grow
rapidly and establish its own ethos. From the outset, and mindful
of his previous experience at the University of New South Wales,
Doug insisted upon having complete independence in developing
the electrical engineering department. It was an exciting and
frantic time. A new building had to be equipped, new courses developed,
new laboratories commissioned, new staff appointed and research
activities commenced. Only a few months' lead time was available
to establish the third-year courses.
Doug attacked this challenge with great enthusiasm and energy.
His leadership was outstanding. He recruited excellent academic
staff and encouraged them quickly to establish strong research
programmes. Doug's approach to undergraduate course design and
tuition was to place great emphasis on the fundamentals of engineering
science. The technology of the day was only of passing interest.
All students, regardless of the field in which they wished to
specialize, had to study across the whole field of electrical
engineering, including power engineering, electronics, communications
and control systems. The core subjects in each year were always
presented in conjunction with a solid laboratory component. Doug
could often be found among the undergraduates while they were
engaged in laboratory work, asking questions, encouraging them,
and helping them to put their work into a wider context. He taught
a generation of electrical engineers and all were touched by his
enthusiasm for his discipline. While he was intellectually formidable,
he was an excellent lecturer, patient and helpful and with a genuine
concern for the welfare of his students.
Events moved quickly on the research front in the early days of
Doug's appointment. Within two years of his arrival at Monash,
Doug was supervising eight PhD students, all of whom had done
their undergraduate studies at other universities, at a time when
it was relatively new for engineering graduates to be interested
in research careers. His research interests at that time were
concentrated on circuit theory and stochastic processes applied
to communication systems. Doug was one of the first to study problems
in circuit theory and signal theory using the time-domain approach.
This was due to his interest in the response of systems to stochastic
signals. He developed the first electrical circuit realization
of a discrete shift operator and this became the central idea
in the analysis and synthesis of a class of N-port networks. Other
contributions that he made to circuit theory included active network
synthesis, filter and amplifier design, networks with randomly
varying parameters and inhomogeneous ladder networks. Doug sought
analytical solutions, and he had uncanny insights into how problems
should be formulated such that they led to analytical solutions.
He was not very interested in numerical solutions. He encouraged
others with interests in the design of electronic equipment, and
he ensured that the new department was well provided with mechanical
and electronics workshops staffed by excellent technicians. Doug's
research reputation quickly became legendary within the academic
and scientific community associated with electrical engineering,
both nationally and internationally. The department attracted
many international visitors and many PhD students. Research seminars
were weekly events, with Doug giving many of them himself. His
research influence was theoretically and scientifically orientated,
rather than the more usual technological research activities of
most engineering departments.
Another important research and teaching activity that Doug initiated
in those early days was biomedical engineering. As a student,
Doug had shown a keen interest in neurophysiology. Later, as we
have seen, he had collaborated with Peter Bishop and Bill Levick
on characterizing the temporal discharge patterns of retinal ganglion
cells. One of Doug's students from his period at the University
of New South Wales, Stephen Redman, followed him to Monash as
a lecturer and joined him in this enterprise. They established
a neurophysiology laboratory for studying spinal reflexes and
were given much encouragement by the Professor of Physiology,
Archie McIntyre, an eminent neurophysiologist. They also benefited
from the advice of Jack Coombs, who spent a year's study leave
with them in 1964-65. Jack had worked for many years with Sir
John Eccles, in Dunedin and then at the ANU, on spinal cord neurophysiology.
It was a very novel activity for engineers to undertake, and it
was not without its sceptics. Doug's laboratory skills and his
interest in surgical procedures were important in the success
of this project. This research led to papers in Nature and
the Journal of Neurophysiology describing the discharge
response of motorneurones when they were activated by electrical
stimulation of peripheral nerves in a more physiological manner
than had been used hitherto.
Following this work, Doug became interested in neuropharmacology,
muscle mechanics, and then anaesthesia. His interest in various
aspects of anaesthesia became his major research activity for
the remainder of his academic career. The initial project was
to use a computer for the multivariable control of respiration
and anaesthesia based on the measured levels of signals such as
end-tidal CO2, blood pressure and inspired oxygen concentration.
The ideas were extended to the computer control of neuro-muscular
block using the integrated electromyogram (IEMG) as a measure
of muscle relaxation. An IEMG monitor was developed into a commercial
device and used for clinical purposes. There followed many years
of work in muscle relaxation and the effects of hypothermia on
cerebral blood flow, all based on the computer control work, At
one stage full cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermia procedures
were being carried out on dogs in the department's laboratories,
using expertise Doug had learnt from anaesthetists and surgeons.
His main collaborators were two Melbourne anaesthetists, Drs Noel
Cass and Kester Brown, and two electrical engineering colleagues
from his own department, Drs Bill Brown and Kim Ng. Doug became
a widely respected researcher amongst the anaesthetic research
community. In November 1972 he became an Honorary Member of the
Australian Society of Anaesthetists and in 1976 he was made an
Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal Australasian
College of Surgeons for 'distinguished research contributions
to anaesthesia'.
For twenty-one of his twenty-eight years at Monash, Doug was chairman
of the Electrical Engineering Department. He was a strong voice
on the Engineering Faculty Board, on the Professorial Board, and
at other forums within the university. He was a staunch defender
of the ideals of outstanding scholarship and intellectual integrity,
and he was highly critical of the trend towards allowing managerial
issues to determine outcomes. He had little respect for university
policy makers whose positions were not based on solid academic
achievements, and he had no interest in university politics. He
disliked petty administrative work and he could be relied on not
to do it. He always fought strongly for a good deal for his own
department, and he was intensely loyal to his staff. He was a
very direct person to deal with, and no one could be in any doubt
about where they stood with him.
Doug retired from Monash University in 1990. The event was marked
by a gathering of most of his former research students, many of
whom travelled from overseas. All gave seminars on their research
work. The common thread throughout two days of talks was the outstanding
research training and example that Doug had provided his students
at a formative stage of their careers, and how grateful they all
were for his guidance. Subsequently a group composed mostly of
the PhD and MEngSc graduates of the department banded together
to fund the establishment of the Douglas Lampard Electrical Engineering
Research Prize and Medal. This is now awarded annually to the
department's top PhD candidate for the year.
Doug was to receive many honours and awards throughout his academic
career. Some have already been mentioned, The most important was
his election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
in 1977. He was elected to Fellowships in the main professional
bodies for electrical engineering, including the Institution of
Electrical Engineers, London; the American Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers; the Institution of Radio and Electrical
Engineers, Australia; the Institution of Engineers, Australia;
and the Australian Institute of Physics. He was on the Board of
Directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
in 1970-71 and received a Centennial Medal from this Institute
in 1984 'in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the
profession of Electrical Engineering'.
Doug listed his recreational activities (in Who's Who,
1994) as hot jazz, perfumery and analytical chemistry. He was
passionately fond of jazz music. His parents were very musical
but he resisted all their suggestions that he learn to play a
musical instrument. At high school, he developed an interest in
traditional jazz and began to collect recordings. This interest
continued to develop while he was an undergraduate at the University
of Sydney. He started to participate in jazz groups, first by
playing the washboard, then the banjo. He found the conventional
fingering arrangements for chords on the banjo to be very awkward,
so he designed his own tuning system to provide a fingering arrangement
to suit himself. This gave a distinctive sound to his banjo. He
played in a Sydney group called the Ross Street Ramblers. He would
regularly leave Sydney on Boxing Day for the Australian Jazz Festival,
wherever it was held. Playing with jazz groups was a great relaxation
for him. While on leave at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana,
he played in Chicago with a well known group called 'The Salty
Dogs'. In Melbourne, he belonged to a group called 'Drs Jazz',
so named because most of its members had either PhD's or medical
degrees. This group played at Doug's memorial service in the Monash
University Chapel in September 1994.
As a schoolboy, Doug's favourite subject was chemistry. His decision
to enrol in engineering rather than in chemistry had been a difficult
one, made at the last minute. In later life he was to return to
his enjoyment of chemistry. He built a large analytical chemistry
laboratory beneath his house. It was superbly equipped. Doug would
attend auctions (or tender a bid) for equipment and chemicals
when commercial laboratories were being closed down. He was able
to obtain some amazing bargains. At first Doug started making
cosmetics and perfumes. This occurred at the time when his two
daughters had reached the age when they needed these items. It
was not uncommon for Doug to bring some of his perfumes into work
to test their popularity. He formulated a large number of floral
perfumes that met family approval and were most acceptable as
Christmas presents for friends and colleagues. This interest led
to his being consulted by several small manufacturing businesses
that did not employ trained chemists. His curiosity about the
constituents of wine that were responsible for their different
flavours led him to study wine chemistry. He lived close to the
Yarra Valley vineyards where a large number of small hobby vineyards,
together with large commercial operations, had been established.
Doug became the wine chemist consultant to many of the wine makers
in the region and he interacted personally with them. Many of
the small boutique wineries were managed by people with no scientific
training, and Doug was able to give them crash courses in wine
chemistry. He enjoyed his interactions with the vignerons and
he also enjoyed tasting the end-products of his advice and analysis.
From these local contacts, his reputation spread, and by the time
he retired from Monash, he had built up a consulting practice
with more than sixty wineries in Australia and New Zealand. During
a short period he spent on study leave in Cambridge in 1988, he
visited wineries in both England and France, and spent some time
in the laboratory of one of the major champagne makers in France.
Doug's consulting activities also extended to the veterinary profession,
where he gave advice on the design of veterinary equipment for
field work and for the operating theatre.
Doug married Roslyn Crane on 18 April 1956. Roslyn was the only
daughter of Ernest George Ekins Crane and Frances Elsie Crane
(nee Dutton) of Epping, New South Wales. They met at the University
of Sydney in the late '40s, where Roslyn completed a Science degree
in 1950, majoring in chemistry and biochemistry. Roslyn became
Medical Librarian at Royal North Shore Hospital. They lived in
Gordon, and had two daughters, Deborah Ann (born 1 May 1957) and
Amanda Frances (born 7 November 1959). After the move to Melbourne
in 1962, they lived at Croydon, in a house perched on the side
of a hill with an easterly aspect. This arrangement gave Doug
the opportunity to excavate under the house and build workshops,
his analytical chemistry laboratory and a spacious office. These
facilities allowed him to pursue many of his scientific interests
at home. Both daughters attended Monash University and graduated
in Science with honours, Deborah in mathematics and Amanda in
immunology. Thus they became the fourth generation of Lampards
to graduate in either science or engineering. Roslyn returned
to medical library work, first at Dandenong Hospital and later
at Lilydale Bush Nursing Hospital.
Doug's hobbies were largely home-based. This meant that he spent
much of his leisure time at home - building, extending, making
perfumes and cosmetics, and doing chemical assays for local wineries.
He was very attentive to his daughters and gave them lots of encouragement
and assistance with their school and university studies. Deborah
became interested in horse riding as a teenager, and while Doug
had no interest in riding, he regularly accompanied Deborah to
wherever the horses were agisted. His interests in physiology
and pharmacology often came into play whenever veterinary attention
was needed. Both daughters married, and Doug found much pleasure
in the company of his two grandchildren, Timothy and Melissa.
Doug was only a few years into retirement, and enjoying his new
business venture assaying wines, when he was diagnosed to have
mesothelioma. In typical style, Doug researched all aspects of
this illness and treatment and explained it in detail to all his
friends and colleagues. The end came quickly and he died at Croydon
on 1 September 1994. Doug was full of courage and determination
during this illness, even though he suffered greatly at times.
His life was ended much too early, as he had much more to give.
In 1995 his department commissioned Jane Majkut to paint his portrait
in oils from photographs. The portrait hangs at the entrance to
the building where Doug had spent the longest period of his professional
career and where the comings and goings of the staff and students
of the active and vibrant department he had established in 1962
can still be observed.
There are many memories Doug's friends and colleagues will have
of him. The overwhelming one must be of an enormously talented
man, who was creative in many diverse fields and activities. Another
must be the infectious enthusiasm and excitement he conveyed about
scientific investigation and discovery. His scholarly style did
not fit well within today's research environment, with its emphasis
on publications, grantsmanship and citation indices. As a major
contributor in fields as diverse as electrostatics, circuit theory,
stochastic processes, medical science and anaesthetics, he would
have felt comfortable in the scientific milieu of the nineteenth
century. Indeed, he would have been able to stand tall among the
great scientists of that era. He lives on in the memory of many
of us who were fortunate to have been associated with him, and
he has left a wonderful legacy through the students he inspired
to do creative work.
I am enormously grateful to Roslyn Lampard and to her daughters
Debbie and Amanda for their help in writing this article. I have
also received valuable assistance from some of Doug's friends
and colleagues. These include Mr Greg Johnson, Dr Ian Harvey,
Mr John Muir, and Professors Bill Levick, Bill Brown and Nhan
Levan. I am very grateful to all of them for their assistance.
BSc in Physics (1st Class Honours), University of Sydney, 1951
MSc in Physics, University of Sydney, 1952
PhD in Mechanical Sciences, University of Cambridge, 1954
Fellow, Australian Academy of Science, 1977
Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Anaesthetists, Royal Australasian
College of Surgeons, 1975
Fellow, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London
Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA
Fellow, Institution of Engineers, Australia
Fellow, Institution of Radio and Electronics Engineers, Australia
Fellow, Australian Institute of Physics
Fellow, Cambridge Philosophical Society
Heaviside Premium, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London,
1957
Albert F. Sperry Award, Instrument Society of America, 1965
Centennial Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
(USA), 1984
1951-1960 | Member, Research Staff, CSIRO Division of Electrotechnology |
1960-1961 | Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales |
1961-1962 | Principal Research Officer, CSIRO Division of Electrotechnology |
1962-1990 | Foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering, Monash University |
Stephen J. Redman, Division of Neuroscience, John Curtin School
of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra,
ACT.
This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 11, no. 2, December 1996, pp. 229-38.