8
BAMOS
Dec 2018
Obituary
Vale Dr. Angus McEwan FAA FTSE
Prepared by Trevor McDougall, John Church and John Zillman
Dr Angus McEwan FAA FTSE who died on 5 September 2018,
at the age of 81, was President of AMOS in 1998–99. A detailed
summary of his career is available on the AMOS website. Both
the detailed summary and that presented below are based on
tributes presented at a celebration of his life held in Hobart on
27 October 2018.
Angus was born in Alloa, a small town on the Forth River in
Scotland in July 1937. After migrating to Australia at age nine,
he left school at age 15 to assist with the family’s finances,
and enrolled at Caulfield Technical College to complete a
diploma in engineering. After six months of national service
with the Air Force, Angus took a laboratory assistant job at the
Commonwealth Aeronautical Research Laboratories (ARL) and
was soon promoted to Experimental Officer. At ARL, he was
working in a research environment with research scientists and
it was here that he first decided he’d like a career in science, and
to do that he needed more qualifications.
Angus completed a degree in mechanical engineering at
Melbourne University, graduating with first class honours
in 1961. While at Melbourne University Angus’ interest in
aerodynamics and boundary layers was inspired by Peter
Joubert, a lecturer in fluid dynamics and later professor. Angus
then went on to do a PhD at the University of Cambridge at
the Cavendish Laboratory under Alan Townsend. It was in that
laboratory that he developed a very close and fruitful working
association with G. I. Taylor, a legendary figure who was credited
with the origins of much of modern fluid mechanics, solid
dynamics, meteorology and oceanography.
Angus at the CSIRO Aspendale laboratory, around 1980.
Image: CSIRO
Returning to Australia from Cambridge in late 1965, Angus
returned to ARL for 3 years as a Research Scientist working on
a variety of experiments on super-sonic flow and the shape
of ablating objects in a hypersonic airstream. His interests
changed to wave experiments, which were a diversion from the
core interests of ARL and, with a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship,
he moved in 1971 to CSIRO Division of Meteorological Physics
at Aspendale in Melbourne. When his fellowship ended, he was
offered a job there as a research scientist with responsibility for
setting up a Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
In some ways Angus did not have the normal background for a
career in ocean and atmospheric research, but his background
in engineering, together with his experience during his PhD
seemed to align perfectly with his natural talents, because he
became the pre-eminent experimentalist in Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics of his generation. Angus was known around the
world for the sheer cleverness of how he set up his scientific
experiments. Angus made fundamental research advances in
several areas, including non-linear wave interactions, turbulent
mixing at both the 1 m and 1000 km scales, and cloud dynamics.
Details of specific experiments Angus devised are included in
the more detailed summary of his career and contributions.
In particular, as a result of Angus’ brilliance in experimental
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, his name will forever be associated
with the Parametric Sub-harmonic Instability (PSI) and
Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) processes, and with “mixing
efficiency”.
Angus at an Open Day at the CSIRO Marine Labs in 1991.