Chemistry in Australia

Australia, as a geologically isolated island continent, offered many advantages to biologists, astronomers and geologists, following its European settlement in 1788. For physical scientists it offered mainly disadvantages for its first century and a half. Its connections with the international comity of science had to go through Britain, three to five months away by sailing ship, and later a month or more by steamer. Chemists lacked the infrastructure of colleagues, societies, laboratories, student training and recognition of importance by the local power structure of government officials, pastoralists and merchants. The first universities were Sydney (1850) and Melbourne (1854), largely set up by Scots, which began to attract staff, chiefly from Britain, but the low density of population and the distances (500 miles between the nearest universities) led to a real isolation of scientific workers which persisted even up to the 1930s.