Obituaries Australia

Professor John Conrad Jaeger, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics in the Australian National University, died recently after a long illness, aged 71 years. Born in Sydney on 30 July 1907, he was educated at the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge.

After a distinguished academic career, Professor Jaeger was invited to set up a Department of Geophysics in the Research School of Physical Sciences at ANU. Under the direction of Professor Jaeger the Department of Geophysics (now the Research School of Earth Sciences) developed rapidly into one of the leading research groups of its kind in the world.

Professor Jaeger had a most distinguished career as a mathematician, physicist and geophysicist. He was a man of great scholastic achievement; he published more than 130 articles in the scientific literature, and was author or co-author of six books in applied mathematics and rock mechanics, which are regarded as standard works in their field. In 1954 Professor Jaeger was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He was its Vice-President during 1958-1959, and in 1970 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (London).