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The following is a tribute to an ex student of Gosford High School.
John Francis Lindsay
1941 – 2008
A True Quiet Achiever
John Francis Lindsay was born in Gosford on the 22nd January 1941, the oldest of four boys to Dorothy and Albert Lindsay, and had very humble beginnings growing up in a small farming community on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
Although the Lindsay boys grew up in very poor circumstances, as did most of the children in the area, they had an almost idyllic childhood on the small family farm at Kincumber overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The Lindsay boys with their cousins and the neighbouring children had the freedom to wander the bushland through rainforested valleys and along near deserted beaches and lagoons, getting up to all sorts of mischief.
This idyllic paradise is now largely covered in housing and is almost part of outer suburbia to the ever spreading city of Sydney, some 80km to the south.
John commenced school at the local Avoca Beach Primary School in 1946, joining the other 9 pupils at the school. He started at a younger age than his mother wanted because the one teacher one room school was in danger of closing. John was eventually to become the first student of the tiny school to graduate from university. At home John had to do homework by kerosene lantern until electricity arrived at the farm in 1951.
In 1953, after 7 years of barefoot school life, he commenced secondary schooling at Gosford High School where he spent the next 5 years, from all accounts, doing very well both academically and athletically.
High school was a shock to all of the Lindsay boys because they had to wear shoes every day.
After graduating from secondary school in 1957, John was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend university. John chose to go to the University of New England at Armidale where he completed an Honours degree and then gained a postgraduate Commonwealth scholarship and completed a Masters degree in Geology. In 1959 he met his beloved Kay who was studying Zoology. During university years John was involved in bushwalking, rock climbing and parachuting amongst other pursuits.
In 1964 John headed to the USA via Africa and Europe to study at Ohio State University, and his new wife, Kay, followed shortly afterwards. As part of his studies, John completed a mission to Antarctica in 1966/67 resulting in a mountain in the Queen Alexandra Range being named after him, Lindsay Peak. John was awarded a PhD by the Ohio State University in 1968, in part based on geological research conducted in Antarctica. Over the next year John was a research associate with the Institute of Polar studies at Ohio State University.
In 1969 John became a Postdoctoral Resident Research Associate with the NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre in Houston Texas and later became staff scientist with the Lunar Science Institute in Houston where he remained until 1972. During this period John provided scientific training for the Apollo Astronauts and studied the Lunar samples as they were returned to Earth.
In 1972 John returned to Antarctica when he led a mission to study landforms as part of the initial preparation for the future Viking Martian landings. John was subsequently awarded the NASA Achievement Award in 1973 for work on the Apollo Lunar Programme and in 1974 the United States Polar Medal for Antarctic Service.
Just before John left NASA he had been accepted onto the astronaut training programme.
With a very homesick wife, John returned to Australia in mid 1972 and took up a position as Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne where he continued to work on the lunar rock samples in association with the Lunar Science Institute.
John could never resist the urge to research and during this time became the family historian and over time managed to compile at least six books of fascinating information about the family and its many branches.
Disillusioned with the state of academic life in Australia, 1974 saw John return to the United States as a Research Scientist with the Marine Science Institute at the University of Texas in Galveston and he was also a Visiting Scientist with the Lunar Science Institute in Houston.
John renewed his long association with the city of Houston in 1978, when he joined the Exxon Production Research Company in a middle management position where he conducted research into petroleum exploration.
After being approached to join the then Bureau of Mineral Resources (now Geoscience Australia) to carry out petroleum research in Australia, John and Kay decided to return to Australia in 1984 with their new son Matthew, and John became a Public Servant as a Senior Principal Research Scientist in Canberra. Apart from a year as an Exchange Scientist with the British Geological Survey in the UK in 1988/89, John, Kay and Matthew called Canberra home for the next 17 years.
Johns work saw him leading many field trips throughout central Australia and constantly publishing scientific papers and in 1994 was awarded the Australian Institute of Cartographers award for his work on the Amadeus Basin in central Australia.
Being a Public Servant in Canberra did not sit well with John and after several rounds of budget cuts, increasing politicization of the public service and a seemingly unsupportive management, he was left with little option but to accept redundancy and left Geoscience Australia in 1999 under very unpleasant circumstances.
John’s professionalism would not allow him to abandon unfinished work and he took up a role as visiting fellow with the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University allowing him to complete work he had started at Geoscience Australia and also to pursue consulting work.
John also became an Adjunct Professor with the Earth Sciences Department of Oxford University, a position he held until his death.
In 1999 at the same time as he was being forced out of Geoscience Australia, Kay was diagnosed with cancer and, despite a very determined battle, died in 2001. A certain spark went out of John after that and he found life without Kay very difficult.
In 2002 he again left the Australian scientific scene, vowing never to work in Australia again, and returned to the type of work he most loved, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston where he was respected and his scientific knowledge appreciated and sought. Much of John’s research at the Institute was associated with the planning of NASA’s manned Martian expeditions and the recognition and identification of early life forms. He was also researching lunar dust as part of NASA’s planned return to the moon. John’s aim was to see out his career in Houston before retiring back to Canberra at the end of 2009.
In 2003 disaster hit again when the massive bushfires raged through Canberra destroying some 500 homes, including John’s. Luckily all of his possessions were in storage and survived, including his large collection of antiques. Such was his passion for antiques that he was still having pieces delivered up until a couple of days before he died.
John had just about overcome the aftermath of the fires and had rebuilt his home ready for his retirement when he was diagnosed with Melanoma in late 2006.
John underwent some horrific treatment with only limited success and it looked like the cancer was winning. Ironically it was not the cancer that finished him in the end but a secondary infection he acquired whilst in hospital in Houston that could not be controlled with antibiotics.
John passed away on the 20th June 2008.
His passing took the family by surprise and sadly no one was able to make it to Houston in time before he died, but they were all comforted to know that he had a large circle of good friends supporting him during these dark times.
The Lunar and Planetary Institute accorded John the great honour of holding a memorial service for him there on 1st July 2008. The service was attended by over 100 co-workers and friends, mainly from the scientific community and John was honoured by many speakers, including the head of the Institute Steve Mackwell, Australia’s astronaut Andy Thomas, friends and family members.
The regard in which John was held around the world has overwhelmed his family, who knew he was working on interesting and exciting things, but had limited knowledge of just what he was actually doing.
Sadly because of inadequacies of management and funding of scientific research in Australia John had spent more than half of his working life outside this country.
John had published almost 200 scientific papers, written the only text book on Lunar stratigraphy and had been recently commissioned to write a text book on the origins of early life based on his astrobiology research. He was often invited to speak at conferences around the world, and was due to speak in Florence in August this year.
John did not big note himself at all and to his three younger brothers he was just their daggy big brother with no dress sense.
Even though John appears to have managed to fit a couple of normal lifetime’s experience into his life, has worked on every continent on earth and visited a good many of its islands, 67 is still too young and he had much more to do and to give.
So to those who knew John, please raise a glass of wine sometime, nothing flash - just a cheap one will do.
John is survived by his son Matthew and his younger brothers, Phillip, Grahame and David.
The family will miss you John, they are devastated.
For more information on the life and achievements of John Lindsay please go to
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/features/jLindsay/
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