Lyn Oliver AM PhD Msc

Historical Article

Farewell retirement speech for Lyn Oliver

We are here to celebrate the career of Adjunct Associate Professor Lyn Oliver, or ‘Hawk Eye’ as he calls himself, as he begins what he calls ‘infinite leave’. And it has been a distinguished career.

I would like to share some of Lyn’s achievements through his professional life to date.

Lyn at 17 years of age, with his baby sister.

Lyn is a Perth boy and started work in Perth as a radiographer at the age of 17 years in 1959 (that’s 51 years in the business!). Lyn then decided to study Applied Science at Perth Technical College which lead to a role as Medical Physics Technician in 1964, still in Perth and while he completed part-time an Associate Degree in Applied Science at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT).

The Honour Board in the Royal Perth Hospital, Medical Physics Department, where Lyn Oliver first began his medical physics career. With no registrar or trainee positions in those days, he received his training working as a ‘laboratory technologist’.

He moved overseas after completing the Associate in 1969 to study his MSc at the London University while working as a Medical Physicist at King’s College Hospital and returned to Australia to work at Prince of Wales Hospital, Institute of Radiation Oncology, and worked there as a Senior Medical Physicist for 18 years from 1971.

The Prince of Wales Hospital cancer group with partners mixed business and pleasure with Oncology specialists in surgery, radiology and radiation oncology on the left and the medical physicists on the right. The radiation oncologist, Professor Lester Peters, is standing mid left and medical physicists (all on the right) are Dr James Stewart, Dr Lyn Oliver and Dr Christopher Karolis. Radiation Oncologist, Dr Hedi Mameghan took the photograph.

This is where Lyn’s creativity and ambitions flourished as he worked with his favourite Physicist, Tony Knittel. Through this time, it emerged that Lyn was not happy doing a single job. He wanted more. He began to take on significant professional roles on top of the day job. This is a well-worn theme for Lyn’s career. One of the enduring images I have is of Lyn at home working on a laptop computer in front of TV with his wife, Barbara, next to him on her laptop booking the next holiday.

Members of the ACPSEM Council – from left, Professor Alun Beddoe (NZ), Rogers (NZ), Dr Michael Repacholi (SA), Mr Ed Scull (WA), Mr Malcolm Millar (Vic.), Dr David Robinson (President), Mr Ralph Nicholls (SA), Mr Ken Clarke (Immediate-Past-President), Mr Lee Collins (Treasurer), Mr Lyn Oliver (Hon. Secretary), Mr David Collins (WA), Dr Gray Southon (NSW) and Mr Robert Fitchew (Q).

Lyn was part of the Steering committee that created the Australasian College of Physical Scientists in Medicine which was later re-named to be the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM). The College is the professional organisation for Medical Physicists. This brings me to a second theme, and that is that Lyn likes to drive activities. He’s dogged, determined, loves competition and pretty much always succeeds. Though his taste is sometimes questionable. He says he loves all competitions, sports and even Big Brother and now Masterchef. But I’ll never know why he allowed a Swans guernsey from the year they lost the Grand Final to be mounted on the wall in the Physics Section corridor.

He worked and achieved great things with the College – acting a variety of roles: as Honorary Secretary from 1978 to 1982; Chairman of the NSW Branch between 1982 and 1987, then Treasurer of NSW Branch 1990 to 1992. He helped to develop the Accreditation system for Medical Physicists through ACPSEM in 1985. He’s author of the College Position paper for staffing and the role of the Medical Physicist. He was Chair of the Accreditation Panel from 2003 to July this year. He ran the College as President in 2004 -5 around the time of the Baume Inquiry and brought in much needed Federal funds to the College. This was one of the most active times for the College inside a community push through the Baume Report for significant changes to Health Care and Cancer Care awareness/funding specifically.

Lyn was awarded a Distinguished Service Award from ACPSEM in 2008. But it didn’t stop there. Lyn played a significant role with the introduction of the current Medical Physics Award. He played a significant role with the NSW EPA to initiate radiation licensing within Radiotherapy and the Radiation Advisory Panel. He played a significant role with Physicists explicitly inside the ARPANSA codes of Practice. Lyn’s legacy at Royal North Shore Hospital, in Medical Physics and Radiation Safety, is hard to avoid in these circles and that’s a tribute to the man.

Lyn Oliver and family at the Graduation day.

While working at POWH, Lyn completed his PhD entitled Electromechanical Study of Red Blood Cells.Hopefully he’ll reprise some later on. Lyn has supervised many students, some are current Directors of Medical Physics Departments. One, Chris Amies, is second from top worldwide for Siemens. All have benefitted greatly from Lyn’s contribution. Lyn has around 30 peer reviewed papers, and many more presentations. Lyn lectures in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney since the inception of the Institute of Medical Physics. Lyn has also contributed greatly worldwide through his efforts with the IAEA. He has travelled all around the world educating people in the science of Radiation Protection. He has done this for years, being a part of some very successful programs and this continues today with Lyn jetting off to South-East Asia in two weeks for another month delivering IAEA training. We all speculate about what Lyn is going to do while on leave and there’s a fair chance he’ll keep working. He’s already been approached by the College to consult for them in various capacities and there’s always Lyn’s love of the stockmarket.

Before Lyn in this department, Armin Langeneggar was head of Physics. He too was employed by Lyn in his first medical physics job at POWH. Armin is currently running the Proton treatment planning system program at Varian Medical Systems. Lyn moved from POWH to RNSH to replace Armin in 1990. The Physics Group here has earned a good reputation under Lyn. I feel that the post is a prestigious one and certainly a hard act to follow.

Lyn has always been a philosopher, a big picture guy, looking into the crystal ball. Lyn was part of the research relationship RNSH had with Varian Medical Systems under Dr Raj Malik. Through the years, RNSH had the first Ximatron simulator, the first multileaf collimator, the first silicon electronic portal imaging device and assisted later with the development of cone beam imaging of patients under treatment. Lyn was the inaugural Chair of the Varian Image-guided-radiotherapy (IGRT) School.

He’s become, for good reason, the go-to man for Medical Physics within Australia for both Federal and State Governments. In fact, here’s what Abel MacDonald, Director of Radiation Oncology in the Department of Health and Ageing, had to say in regard to Lyn when he heard of this occasion:

“I met Lyn in 2004 after the Baume Inquiry into Australian Radiotherapy Services and worked with him on the concept of a ‘fast-track accreditation’ program as well as the project to create a medical physics Training and Education and Assessment Program (TEAP). We had some funding limitations at the time but, between us, we were able to come up with some creative ways of addressing this. It was a great example of the Government and the profession being able to understand each other’s needs and coming up with a workable solution. Seeing students completing TEAP now is something that he should be proud of.

Following this project, we then sat together on a panel to assess Continuing Professional Development (CPD) grant activities for the profession. There were certainly some long and complex conversations but again, I think we managed to get some good resources for the physics community. A year or two later, we then moved on to a Commonwealth funded project to increase the College’s general capacity. The College has certainly come a long way since that time and it’s wonderful to see.

Now, almost eight years on since the Baume Inquiry, TEAP well developed and a strong base on which to build. From my personal perspective, I witnessed many examples of how Lyn went above and beyond the call of duty to assist in achieving these aims.

My sincere thanks to you.”

Lyn has seen all of it unfold over the last 50 years. In his invited

And now for the next challenge in retirement.

presentation at last year’s Combined Scientific Meeting (CSM) on the history of Medical Physics in Australia. He defined the era of radiotherapy. During the ‘80s, much of the equipment was built in-house, during the ‘90s everything became more commercialized and now we’re heading into another fertile era of rapid advancement.

I think he’s happy knowing this is where we are. I think we should acknowledge Lyn’s significant contribution in bringing us here.