Starting the blog

Hi, my name is Jacquie and I am Uwe's youngest daughter. Uwe died Friday August 28th at the age of 93 after a short illness. I decided to start a blog for all the people around the world who had come in contact with him over the years. His grandchildren would love to know more about him and what he did so if you would like to contribute any stories or memories please contact me on jacquie@janison.com.au if you need any help to make a posting here.

The Doc

From Barry McInnes

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

I keep going around and around, as there are so many things about what to say about The Doc (Uwe) and Anita. Doc (and Anita) have been part of my life since 1973 and then my family since 1984, and will always be in our thoughts.
Uwe was the most intelligent and smartest, most widely travelled, and most interesting person I have met. It all started for me in 1973 when I got a summer job with the then Antarctic Division, with Bill Budd, writing a computer model for ice shelves. In the days of punch cards and paper tape. I remember the coffee that was made in the old building near the corner of Swanston and Grattan St. It was made every morning and was thick enough to put in Bill's 911. After a week or so of drinking this stuff, I started to work out why my stomach was in such bad condition !
I continued on to do Honours, a Masters and a PhD through the Meteorology Department, under the watchful eyes of Bill and Uwe. It still amazes me the ideas of Ice dynamics and Surging Glacier modelling that they put forward, and it was a privilege to work within the Meteorology Department, that was nestled close to the Geology building where I originally started at Melbourne University. So many great characters were contained within the Department and Antarctic Division.
Getting into computing was never originally in my plans, but I am still doing Systems work now, in 2009. There are so many lessons and stories about those years, it could fill a few volumes, just like my thesis.
The Doc was held in the same esteem in the Department as The Don in the cricket, and I came to realize that only very few people get the honour to be called The. I am not sure who first coined Uwe the Doc, but it was a grand title.
My major life change was to come in 1980 when The Doc bought me over to work on the Greenland project with him and Jo Fletcher at CIRES. In the subsequent trips back to complete the project I ended up getting married, travel to most of the states in North America, all due mainly to Doc. He planned a trip to University of Maine for me, when the leaves would be changing colour. Also to Seattle when there would be a few days without rain. There were many times when we went to the various house and apartments when Uwe and Anita would invite us to gatherings and get togethers to keep in touch. Always happy to discuss any topic especially the politics of the day, always with a wicked sense of humour and amazing perception. Always interesting stories, some about his time in Scotland, and the ship transport out to Oz, although he was not impressed with the TV series, the Dunera Boys. He told us how they did not know where the ship was going, so he calculated the position of the ship without any help.
After we moved back to Australia and enlarged the family to five, we moved back to the US in 1993, and met up again, with picnics at Frasier Meadows with the geese, the Radok's always the perfect hosts with lots of stories and lots of interest in what the kids were doing.
It always amazed me how the Doc had time to do all his projects, write papers, travel, and help so many people all over the world, all the time. He was a great driving force within a small frame.
There are so many stories to share, like his remote volume control for the TV which consisted of a piece of wire on the volume knob, which he rotated with a short pole while sitting on the couch. He got a kick out of showing it to us. Like the time he cross country skied into CIRES after a snowstorm in Boulder when the town was pretty much shutdown.
Since the Radok's move back to "retirement" in Australia, we kept in touch via email which got harder to do as the Doc's eyesight got worse.
He was the major influence on my life and how my family came together, and I am sure untold numbers of others were influenced in the same positive fashion.
Uwe and Anita were my "US parents" when I married Carol in Steamboat Springs in 1984. Doc, you will be missed but never forgotten - thank you from Barry, Carol, Shannon, Lachlan and Brendan McInnes.
Thank you Doc.

Friends

The Radoks and the Rigbys met 42 years ago on the S.S. Himalaya sailing from the UK to Melbourne. Uwe and Anita were returning from a sabbatical year in Cambridge. My husband and I and 6 week old daughter were 10 pound pommie migrants. On the shop you were allotted your table for the entire journey regardless of the compatibility. For four weeks we were sharing with the Radoks. How fortunate were we?! The time passed very happy with lots of fun. Both Uwe and Anita had been migrants themselves in the days when conditions were very much harder. The information we learned from them was invaluable to our settling into the Australian life. Every evening without fail, Uwe would make his potent brew of coffee enjoyed tremendously by my husband. Every evening we chatted the time away.

After arriving in Melbourne we kept in touch even though we soon were living in country Victoria. For the first 2 years my husband did locums for single handed GP's. The next 8 years were spend in Donald - a tiny town- one doctor (my husband) and base hospital 100 miles away. We were tied to the practice, but many times Uwe and Anita visited us.

When we left Victoria for NSW I asked Uwe for a reference. No problems. When I opened the envelope and read it, I was aghast! It was as follows, written on official University of Melbourne notepaper:

I have known own Pip Rigby since a hilarious sea journey from the UK 10 years ago and watched her deteriorate into a real Aussie country drongo ever since. My only professional contact with her was a demonstration on my own back - how a relatively harmless infection pain can be made much more severe by pressing in all the wrong places; I am better now, thank you. I reckon it serves the Finlay cockies right to be similarly treated; they won't mind, since she's not a bad drop of skin. So by all means, let PIP RIP.

UR

underneath was written in Uwe's own hand. 'Pip - if you don't like this, here is an alternative version attached.
Needless to say, the official reference was very acceptable indeed!

When Uwe and Anita left for America, we still kept in touch and continued to meet when they returned to Australia for holidays.

I have never met anyone quite like Uwe and probably never will. He always looked like the absent-minded professor with his glasses perched in the end of his nose, his shirts invariably buttoned up wrong, His mind was razor sharp and his knowledge of so many things was immense. He spoke about 5 languages, had lived in many different communities and always could relate to just about everyone.

So farewell Uwe. You had a good life - an incredible wife and 3 lovely daughters. Thank you for your friendship your wisdom sense of humour and your dreadful coffee. I only had one in the entire 4 week journey. It was enough for me!

Pip Rigby - Benalla Victoria

Family Memories

Saying goodbye to grandpa.


As an adult, I have always been proud of Uwe, for what he overcame,
and for his awesome range of talents. As a child, he was grandpa.
Small, thick glasses, thicker accent, and a bewildering habit of changing languages when he and nana wanted the children or the grandchildren not to understand them!

He was always interesting and interested. I remember going to stay with him and nana in Colorado for our honeymoon, and finding out he was studying shipping records from the 18th century for the information they contained about El Nino, and La Ninia. I also remember John (my husband) driving him to the local restaurant with a constant liturgy of ‘too fast too fast!’ as we cruised at a gentle 10 miles an hour!

In Brussels I remember him boiling his contact lenses in a small saucepan with great concentration.

He brought me flowers on the day I was born – the first person ever to bring me flowers. And when I was a depressed teenager, he came to see me, bringing a carefully typed quote ‘worry about hunger and shelter, all else is vapours’.

When I rang to wish him a happy 90th birthday a couple of years ago, I asked him how he felt being ninety. He said it was too old, he’d had enough now. I am sure he’s not looking down on us, he was relentlessly scientific and pragmatic, but I am even more sure the world is a poorer place without him in it, while we are richer for
having known him.


love from cressi (and john and lyra and kyle)

Neighbours through the years

From Lesley and Frank Chamberlain late of Ringwood and now residing at Forest Hill, Vic.
We extend our deepest sympathy to your Mother Anita, your sister Claudia and yourself for the sad loss of your Father Uwe.

We first got to know your parents when Claudia was at kindergarten at the same as our daughter Dianne. At that time your father was at the Melbourne University and working towards his PhD. I used to help from time to time by assisting with the spelling and grammar. We became good friends and managed to keep in touch throughout the years.

Yours sincerely ... Frank Chamberlain.

Meteorology Department, Melbourne Uni

From Ian Allison

I first met Uwe Radok in 1966 when he gave a short optional unit (7 lectures with copious hand-out notes) on introductory meteorology as part of my final year physics course at Melbourne University. Early the next year I joined his Meteorology Department to undertake, initially, an Honours degree and eventually other higher degrees. I was, I suspect, attracted more by the skis on the roof of the Departmental vehicle than by Uwe’s lectures on atmospheric dynamics!

As a prospective honours student who had not taken a full formal undergraduate course in Meteorology I had to first self-study (with subterfuge help from other graduate students) from the text “Dynamical and Physical Meteorology” by Haltiner and Martin, and then sit a one-person Uwe-supervised examination before admission to the Department. To a brand-new graduate Uwe (or “the Doc” as he was universally known) was a strict and demanding master. He certainly taught me the scientific rigour that I still rely on (much to the chagrin of some present-day students). But it didn’t take all that long to realise that beneath the gruff exterior, and sometimes short temper, was a very warm person who truly wanted to help people and to foster recruits to the science that he loved.

Uwe continued to share his wisdom and advice over many years and many adventures. He was an enthusiastic correspondent when I made my first trip to the Antarctic; he recruited me to the Carstensz Glaciers Expedition to the equatorial glaciers of New Guinea and shared our excitement during that trip (he was particularly delighted to approve the petty cash voucher for beads that I purchased to trade with our native porters); and most importantly, he taught me the importance of international collaboration in global science, and introduced me to a world where I could participate in that collaboration.

Uwe Radok was never a formal supervisor or advisor to any of the degrees that I completed. But I regard him as my one true mentor in science, and as the person who, more than anyone, helped me get to where I have. Farewell and thank you Uwe.