Eminent researcher loved teaching, applying and advocating science
By Leon Mann and David Satchell
TONY KLEIN December 14, 1935-November 18, 2021
Emeritus Professor Anthony George Klein, AM, who passed away in November aged 85, was an outstanding physicist, research leader, teacher, science communicator, mentor, and much loved and admired family man, friend and colleague.
Tony’s long association with the University of Melbourne where he was Emeritus Professor of Physics began as an engineering student in 1954 and continued until his death. He held two doctorates from Melbourne – a PhD (1976) and a DSc (1987).
Tony was recognised by his university, profession, and country for his many achievements.
He was awarded the Australian Institute of Physics Walter Boas Medal 1990; was elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science 1994; was appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1999 “for service to science, particularly as a researcher in the field of neutron optics, and to the community through the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital”; was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal 2001 “for service to Australian society and science in experimental physics”; and was given the University of Melbourne Award in 2017 to “individuals who have made an outstanding and enduring contribution to the University and its scholarly community”.
Tony was born in Timisoara, Romania, in 1935, the only child of Jewish parents. He witnessed anti-Semitism, saw the wartime Nazi-allied dictatorship of Marshal Ion Antonescu, the post-war communist regime, lived a year in Israel in 1952, then migrated to Australia with family in 1953. He had a keen sense of family history and was deeply grateful for his new life in Australia. In 2014, in his late 70s, Tony began his 200-page memoirs. Tony reflected on his personal and family history in Romania and recorded his lifetime in science and teaching and described the influences shaping his life and career.
His memoirs tell the story of his family’s survival in World War II. In 1939, Romania was allied with the West. But in November 1940 a fascist military government under Ion Antonescu seized power and Romania joined the Axis alliance. Romanian Jews were vulnerable to confiscation of property, conscription into labour camps, expulsion, deportation and death. About 400,000 Jews including several of Tony’s aunts and uncles were murdered in Romanian-controlled areas.
Tony describes the hazardous situation in Timisoara, an industrial and university city of 100,000 people, about 10 per cent Jews. Tony’s father, a partner in a small factory manufacturing detergents and tanning materials, was conscripted into a forced-labour brigade. He was also threatened with deportation. He might have avoided deportation because his factory made products essential to the war effort. One story is that sympathetic officials in Timisoara disobeyed German orders to deport Jews to the death camps. Tony writes “the local station master could never find the railway trucks needed to deport the Jews of Timisoara”. Another possibility is he “was the recipient of regular and substantial bribes from the local Jewish industrialists”.
In August 1944, Romania switched sides following Antonescu’s overthrow and joined the Allies and Russia until war’s end. Tony writes: “By some miracle we survived. But I am convinced it was only a matter of time.”
Tony, a secular Jew, was knowledgeable about Judaism and respected his Jewish identity. In Tony’s last years he embraced his Jewish identity. He sent friends greetings on Shabbat, Passover, and the Jewish New year. He took a keen interest in Israeli politics and was troubled by growing anti-Semitism and anti-Israel ideology.
Tony Klein and Professor Geoff Opat AO (1935 -2002) were inseparable friends and colleagues from their undergraduate years at Melbourne. They were passionate about physics, the world of knowledge, good teaching and good universities. In the late 1960s Tony and Geoff worked with Professor David Caro in high-energy physics. Tony and Geoff then explored fundamental physics with neutron beams. Their landmark experiments published in 1975-76, demonstrated that neutrons, although sub-atomic particles of matter, display quantum mechanical attributes associated with waves.
Tony Klein (right) and Geoff Opat discuss their 2π rotation experiment in the School of Physics at The University of Melbourne. (Thanks to Norman Wodetzki for permission to reproduce this photograph from the university archives.)Credit:University of Melbourne
Later Tony, Geoff and Al Cimmino invented the “Rubbery Ruler”, a flexible elastic sensor for measuring length. The “Rubbery Ruler”, worn in space suits, provided the European Space Agency with accurate information on crew movement in zero gravity. The “Rubbery Ruler”, winner of a R&D 100 Award in 1995 for new technological products, had many potential medical, physiological, anatomical, and horticultural applications.
Geoff’s untimely death in 2002 was a great loss to Tony. The death of Tony’s cousin Victor Spitzer (1924-2013) was another great loss. Vic and his family migrated to Australia from Romania in 1939 and he was Tony’s “big brother”. On their daily walks in Studley Park Tony and Vic talked about their lives, work, families and travels.
Tony spoke seven languages and was a gifted lecturer. Carolyn Rasmussen describes Tony’s teaching in her history of the University of Melbourne Shifting the Boundaries (2018). “He … instinctively thought about how best to teach difficult and unfamiliar subjects … he recalled what he found difficult when a student and how he preferred the subject to be presented. For Tony the interesting lecture … was an intellectual adventure ... you watch their faces and keep explaining until those faces light up.”
Tony was also an excellent science communicator, able to explain scientific concepts simply and cogently. He wrote a regular science column for The Age in the 1980s. In July 1969, ABC TV invited Tony to provide live commentary on the Apollo 11 moon landing. Tony commented on the blurry images sent by Apollo 11 from space and the moon. He also presented ABC TV commentary on the Apollo 12 and 13 missions.
Tony served in organisations where his knowledge of optical physics was invaluable. From 1991 to 2010 he chaired the research committee, Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and was Vice-President of the hospital’s committee of management from 1993 to 1995. Tony worked with researchers in other disciplines. He collaborated with Professor Robyn Sloggett, of the Grimwade Centre, on research into materials analysis and provenance documentation for authentication of Australian paintings. Tony’s expertise in optical physics helped develop principles to detect forgeries and authenticate paintings.
He was a loyal member of University House for more than 50 years. Every Friday, he lunched at the renowned Water Table Lunch Group. He relished the exchange of news and views across fields and disciplines, the good humour, a plate of goulash or calamari, the opportunity to discuss subjects such as why whales beach, why abalone shells are lustrous, and so on.
Recipients of the University of Melbourne Award are honoured with a bronze plaque in their name on Professors Walk. Tony was understandably delighted his plaque “Eminent researcher in physics, inspirational lecturer, highly regarded leader and mentor” was placed near the entrance of University House.
Tony was an avid traveller. With his wife, Suzanne, he enjoyed touring in the French Alps while on sabbaticals at the Institut Laue-Langevin Grenoble conducting research on neutron physics, taking family “roots” tours in Romania in a van with his daughters Anita and Stella, Scandinavian cruises on the Hurtigruten, visits to Israel for reunions with high school friends who had migrated from Romania, river travels in Victoria, NSW, SA and Tasmania in motorised rubber dinghies with friends the McTigues and Satchells. And expeditions to Lizard Island with Bruce Livett to collect venomous cone snails. In his last adventure, he and Livett trekked in Borneo in search of orangutans.
The last year of his life, 2021, was very difficult as he battled ill health in a year of COVID-19 restrictions and was unable to work regularly at the university and lunch with friends in University House.
Tony was laid to rest in Lyndhurst Jewish Cemetery. A massive rock stands near the Lyndhurst chapel with the inscription “WITHOUT MEMORY WE ARE NOTHING”, engraved by Andrew Rogers, brother-in-law of Tony’s great friend, Geoff Opat.
He loved and had pride in his wife and his family. He loved the University, the School of Physics, and University House. He loved the Academy of Science and his work as chair of the Victorian section. He loved explaining, teaching, applying and advocating science.
Tony was a proud Australian. The son of Romanian migrants who survived the Holocaust, he had a fortunate and productive life. Tony was a shining example of how successive waves of migrants, many of them refugees from war-torn countries, enriched Australia, contributing greatly to their new country.
He is mourned by Suzanne (nee Gurvich), his second wife and best friend of 50 years.
Tony and his first wife Mavis Cohen (1937-2014) met when University High School students. Married in 1958, they had two daughters Anita and Stella. They divorced in 1971. Tony is mourned by Anita and Stella, stepsons Ian and Peter, four grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and second cousins.
All who knew Tony admired his keen intellect, wide knowledge, insatiable curiosity, quirky sense of humour, warmth, decency and humane values.
Professor Leon Mann AO and Professor David Satchell were Tony Klein’s friends and colleagues from the University House Water Table Lunch Group.