From Don and Marilyn Beran
Meeting Uwe, Anita and Jacque at the airport in Denver Colorado in the mid 1960 is my first memory of the man who had an immeasurable impact on my life. Starting with helping to get them settled at Colorado State University through our last visit in Coffs Harbor, Australia, our paths crossed more times than I can remember. Each encounter with Uwe’s down-to-earth outlook and considerable wisdom left me with fond memories and an enlarged view of what is important.
In my mind there is little doubt that the most cherished interaction with Uwe resulted from his invitation to spend three years in his department at the University of Melbourne. While I can’t be sure if he felt the gamble paid off, I will forever be grateful for the opportunity that he gave me. He and Anita made sure that Marilyn and I were accepted as part of the family and made to feel at home and welcome in what to us was a strange city. I do suspect that after many long hours of thesis rewriting, his patience may have been thinning a bit, but like the outstanding mentor he was, he stuck with me through the long graduate school process.
I now know what it means to have a second father. Uwe gave me the guidance and support that was truly father like, and I will be forever grateful that he was part of my life.
Good by dear friend.
Don Beran
Monday, August 31, 2009
Dunera Boys
From Bern Brendt
During the last years Uwe was the only remaining ‘Dunera Boy’ who, together with me and a group of a few hundred internees, was disembarked in Port Melbourne, spent the next eighteen months in the three Tatura internment Camps 2,3 and 4, and remained in Australia after the war. (the majority of over 2000 Dunera internees disembarked in Sydney and went to two internment camps in Hay).
Uwe was then twenty-three and at seventeen, the age I was then, a six-year age difference is enormous. But there were several points of contact. Uwe told me he came from East Prussia. My maternal grandmother was born in Königsberg, East Prussia. She lived with us when I was a Berlin school boy and had told me much about East Prussia. Also, when I prepared for the Victorian Leaving Certificate exams in Tatura Camp 4 – the matriculation qualification for Melbourne University – Uwe, together with his youngest brother Rainer, was a tutor for the two Leaving Mathematics subjects I had selected: Mathematics 2 (Algebra) and Mathematics 4 (Calculus). They were both excellent teachers and while I did not sit for these two mathematics exams in Tatura but later during the war, I passed both subjects and still feel it was, primarily, due to Uwe and his brother’s teaching skills that I did. I had left my Berlin Goethe Gymnasium in March’38 as a fifteen-year old ‘Obertertianer’, years before the ‘Abitur’.
We were in the same unit during the war – the 8th Australian Employment Company – and in the post-war years I ran into Uwe a couple of times at Melbourne University when he was a lecturer there. I was then an undergraduate and in ’49 I left Melbourne never to live there again. Some years ago I saw Uwe’s e-mail address in the tri-annual ‘Dunera News’ publication and we were in brief e-mail contact. He told me a little about his life during the past half-century and about his time in the U.S. I think it was sometime in 2007 that my wife and I happened to be passing through Coffs Harbour and I dropped in on Uwe unannounced. It was the first time since the 1940ies that I clapped eyes on him and Anita whom I recall as a Melbourne teenager when she was the sister of fellow internee and wartime friend Sandro.
I remember Uwe particularly as a pleasant young man in his early and mid-twenties in Tatura from September ’40 to January ‘42. I am so sorry to hear of his passing.
My condolences go to his immediate and extended family.
During the last years Uwe was the only remaining ‘Dunera Boy’ who, together with me and a group of a few hundred internees, was disembarked in Port Melbourne, spent the next eighteen months in the three Tatura internment Camps 2,3 and 4, and remained in Australia after the war. (the majority of over 2000 Dunera internees disembarked in Sydney and went to two internment camps in Hay).
Uwe was then twenty-three and at seventeen, the age I was then, a six-year age difference is enormous. But there were several points of contact. Uwe told me he came from East Prussia. My maternal grandmother was born in Königsberg, East Prussia. She lived with us when I was a Berlin school boy and had told me much about East Prussia. Also, when I prepared for the Victorian Leaving Certificate exams in Tatura Camp 4 – the matriculation qualification for Melbourne University – Uwe, together with his youngest brother Rainer, was a tutor for the two Leaving Mathematics subjects I had selected: Mathematics 2 (Algebra) and Mathematics 4 (Calculus). They were both excellent teachers and while I did not sit for these two mathematics exams in Tatura but later during the war, I passed both subjects and still feel it was, primarily, due to Uwe and his brother’s teaching skills that I did. I had left my Berlin Goethe Gymnasium in March’38 as a fifteen-year old ‘Obertertianer’, years before the ‘Abitur’.
We were in the same unit during the war – the 8th Australian Employment Company – and in the post-war years I ran into Uwe a couple of times at Melbourne University when he was a lecturer there. I was then an undergraduate and in ’49 I left Melbourne never to live there again. Some years ago I saw Uwe’s e-mail address in the tri-annual ‘Dunera News’ publication and we were in brief e-mail contact. He told me a little about his life during the past half-century and about his time in the U.S. I think it was sometime in 2007 that my wife and I happened to be passing through Coffs Harbour and I dropped in on Uwe unannounced. It was the first time since the 1940ies that I clapped eyes on him and Anita whom I recall as a Melbourne teenager when she was the sister of fellow internee and wartime friend Sandro.
I remember Uwe particularly as a pleasant young man in his early and mid-twenties in Tatura from September ’40 to January ‘42. I am so sorry to hear of his passing.
My condolences go to his immediate and extended family.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Uwe Radok PhD Thesis Award
The Uwe Radok Award for the best PhD Thesis
Uwe Radok is one of Australia’s pioneers in meteorological and glaciological research. Becoming Head of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in 1960, he played a leading role in the development of Australian Antarctic meteorology and glaciology. A meltwater lake about 9 km long, at the eastern extremity of the Aramis Range in the Prince Charles Mountains about 6 km west of Beaver Lake, and marked by a slender glacier tongue feeding into it, has been named the Radok Lake after him.
In appreciation of Uwe Radok’s achievements, AMOS will make an annual award for the best PhD thesis for the preceding two years in the fields of meteorology, oceanography, glaciology or climatology
http://www.amos.org.au/awards/cid/8/parent/0/pid/8/t/awards/title/uwe-radok-phd-thesis-award
Uwe Radok is one of Australia’s pioneers in meteorological and glaciological research. Becoming Head of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in 1960, he played a leading role in the development of Australian Antarctic meteorology and glaciology. A meltwater lake about 9 km long, at the eastern extremity of the Aramis Range in the Prince Charles Mountains about 6 km west of Beaver Lake, and marked by a slender glacier tongue feeding into it, has been named the Radok Lake after him.
In appreciation of Uwe Radok’s achievements, AMOS will make an annual award for the best PhD thesis for the preceding two years in the fields of meteorology, oceanography, glaciology or climatology
http://www.amos.org.au/awards/cid/8/parent/0/pid/8/t/awards/title/uwe-radok-phd-thesis-award
Uwe Radok 8 February 1916- 28 August 2009
RADOK
Dr Uwe
P a s s e d away
peacefully in Coffs
Harbour, NSW.
Beloved husband of
Anita, Brother of
Christoph, Rainer
(dec), Jobst (dec),
G u n d u l a ( d e c ) ,
Brother-in-law of
S a n d r o ( d e c ) ,
Cynthia, Monika and
Dagmar. Father of
Claudia, Helen (dec)
and Jacquie. Father
and grandfather-inlaw
of Robert, Wayne
and J o h n ,
G r a n d f a t h e r o f
Cressi, Ursula (dec),
Montana, Miranda,
Nina, Harry and
S a s h a , G r e a t -
Grandfather of Lyra
and Kyle.
No flowers please, in lieu
donations can be
made t o t h e
Parkinsons Research
Foundation (http://
www. parkinsonsvic.org.au)
P l e a s e c o n t a c t
Jacquie Houlden
Jacquie@janison.com.au
if you are interested
in contributing to an
online obituary blog
for Uwe.
Dr Uwe
P a s s e d away
peacefully in Coffs
Harbour, NSW.
Beloved husband of
Anita, Brother of
Christoph, Rainer
(dec), Jobst (dec),
G u n d u l a ( d e c ) ,
Brother-in-law of
S a n d r o ( d e c ) ,
Cynthia, Monika and
Dagmar. Father of
Claudia, Helen (dec)
and Jacquie. Father
and grandfather-inlaw
of Robert, Wayne
and J o h n ,
G r a n d f a t h e r o f
Cressi, Ursula (dec),
Montana, Miranda,
Nina, Harry and
S a s h a , G r e a t -
Grandfather of Lyra
and Kyle.
No flowers please, in lieu
donations can be
made t o t h e
Parkinsons Research
Foundation (http://
www. parkinsonsvic.org.au)
P l e a s e c o n t a c t
Jacquie Houlden
Jacquie@janison.com.au
if you are interested
in contributing to an
online obituary blog
for Uwe.
Lake Radok
A meltwater lake about 9 km long and marked by a slender glacier tongue feeding into it. The lake is at the eastern extremity of the Aramis Range in the Prince Charles Mountains about 6 km west of Beaver Lake. Plotted from ANARE air photographs taken during 1956. Named after Dr Uwe Radok, lecturer in meteorology at the University of Melbourne, who has greatly assisted ANARE''s glaciological programme.
Latitude: 70° 51' 35.0" S -70.860°
Longitude: 67° 59' 47.0" E 67.996°
The life and times of Uwe Radok
This is a reprint of an article by Peter Schwerdtfeger in the
Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol 19 page 1, (2006)
As a young university student, Uwe Radok fled
Germany as Nazism’s grip intensified. He found
himself working as an engineering draftsman in
England before becoming interned, along with
future Nobel Prize winners. As one of the
“Dunera Boys”, so well described by the author
Cyril Pearl, he involuntarily reached Australia
for a further period of internment and subsequent
release on voluntarily joining the Australian
Army in 1942. This decision entitled him to
further studies in Meteorology at the University
of Melbourne after the close of hostilities.
Through his monumental PhD thesis under Dr.
Fritz Loewe, another German refugee, he was
that notable polar explorer’s only higher degree
candidate.
Radok’s interests covered an enormous range of
experimental and theoretical studies. Feeling
isolated in the diminutive Meteorology
Department of the University, he sought
cooperation with research partners from many
organisations, including the Bureau of
Meteorology, CSIRO, the Snowy Mountains
Hydro-electric Authority, the (then) Weapons
Research Establishment and Antarctic Division.
It was with the latter that he built up a
remarkably successful programme in Glaciology,
years before anyone else in the Australian
meteorological community realised the
significance of Antarctic land- and sea-ice as
long and short-term climate indicators. In a
country devoid of glaciers, many, including Prof.
Bill Budd, were able to build their careers on
Radok’s pioneering ideas.
Following the University’s access to digital
computing facilities on CSIRAC, Radok
continued to demonstrate his versatility as he and
his student Dr. Dick Jenssen managed to wring
out Australia’s first numerical weather forecasts
from a primitive system which ran with a 100
memory elements! Later he supervised the
BoM’s pioneers, including Ross Maine, in this
important field.
Responding to problems experienced by higher
flying civilian aircraft as passenger jets
commenced service in Australia, he cooperated
with Prof. Elmar Reiter of Colorado State
University and Kevin Spillane of the BoM, in
clarifying concepts of clear air turbulence.
His support for and encouragement of students
was enormous. When the University Radio Club
sought help in building an antenna to receive the
then revolutionary satellite images of the Earth’s
clouds, his decision to offer space and funds was
rewarded by successful reception of images
which greatly helped the BoM until it built its
own receiving station.
In spite of his prodigious personal output of
publications and a continuous stream of
successful graduate students, circumstances were
such that in 1977 he felt that he had no choice
but to leave the University of Melbourne, which
he had intellectually enriched for a quarter of a
century. The U.S. benefited from his last decade
of research.
Nevertheless, Australia remained home to Uwe
Radok and he returned to retire quietly with his
wife Anita. Even now, having celebrated his 90th
birthday earlier this year, email enables him to
remain in contact with his many friends,
including former students and colleagues. Many
of these students have made distinguished
careers in Meteorology and they will applaud the
decision by AMOS, facilitated by the generosity
of some of them, to found the annual “Uwe
Radok Award” for the best PhD thesis submitted
at an Australian University.
Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol 19 page 1, (2006)
As a young university student, Uwe Radok fled
Germany as Nazism’s grip intensified. He found
himself working as an engineering draftsman in
England before becoming interned, along with
future Nobel Prize winners. As one of the
“Dunera Boys”, so well described by the author
Cyril Pearl, he involuntarily reached Australia
for a further period of internment and subsequent
release on voluntarily joining the Australian
Army in 1942. This decision entitled him to
further studies in Meteorology at the University
of Melbourne after the close of hostilities.
Through his monumental PhD thesis under Dr.
Fritz Loewe, another German refugee, he was
that notable polar explorer’s only higher degree
candidate.
Radok’s interests covered an enormous range of
experimental and theoretical studies. Feeling
isolated in the diminutive Meteorology
Department of the University, he sought
cooperation with research partners from many
organisations, including the Bureau of
Meteorology, CSIRO, the Snowy Mountains
Hydro-electric Authority, the (then) Weapons
Research Establishment and Antarctic Division.
It was with the latter that he built up a
remarkably successful programme in Glaciology,
years before anyone else in the Australian
meteorological community realised the
significance of Antarctic land- and sea-ice as
long and short-term climate indicators. In a
country devoid of glaciers, many, including Prof.
Bill Budd, were able to build their careers on
Radok’s pioneering ideas.
Following the University’s access to digital
computing facilities on CSIRAC, Radok
continued to demonstrate his versatility as he and
his student Dr. Dick Jenssen managed to wring
out Australia’s first numerical weather forecasts
from a primitive system which ran with a 100
memory elements! Later he supervised the
BoM’s pioneers, including Ross Maine, in this
important field.
Responding to problems experienced by higher
flying civilian aircraft as passenger jets
commenced service in Australia, he cooperated
with Prof. Elmar Reiter of Colorado State
University and Kevin Spillane of the BoM, in
clarifying concepts of clear air turbulence.
His support for and encouragement of students
was enormous. When the University Radio Club
sought help in building an antenna to receive the
then revolutionary satellite images of the Earth’s
clouds, his decision to offer space and funds was
rewarded by successful reception of images
which greatly helped the BoM until it built its
own receiving station.
In spite of his prodigious personal output of
publications and a continuous stream of
successful graduate students, circumstances were
such that in 1977 he felt that he had no choice
but to leave the University of Melbourne, which
he had intellectually enriched for a quarter of a
century. The U.S. benefited from his last decade
of research.
Nevertheless, Australia remained home to Uwe
Radok and he returned to retire quietly with his
wife Anita. Even now, having celebrated his 90th
birthday earlier this year, email enables him to
remain in contact with his many friends,
including former students and colleagues. Many
of these students have made distinguished
careers in Meteorology and they will applaud the
decision by AMOS, facilitated by the generosity
of some of them, to found the annual “Uwe
Radok Award” for the best PhD thesis submitted
at an Australian University.
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