Noel William Davies

  General Notes:

Married Sharn Cooper: born 15/7/1952
Poem written by John Davies for his brother Noel on his 60th birthday:
Noel

The twenty sixth of February
Nineteen fifty three,
The day a fair-haired boy was added
To the family tree.

The "Noel" name was not inspired
by Coward (that I know).
But was it 'coz it's "Christmassy"
His Granddad called him "Snow"?

A love of music has our Noel,
From Bach to jazz guitar,
Piano classics by the score,
The choral repertoire.

For minerals of every hue
Our Noel's your man all right.
He has the finest specimen
Of xantho-something-ite.

Noel mucked around a bit on farms;
At Uni he did Ag.
That's where he met the lovely Sharn,
The belle of Castlecrag.

Noel has a keen inquiring mind,
Desiring most to know
Just what is it that makes up stuff;
Why is the world "just so"?

That's why the lure of chemistry
Was strong, and so he spent
His time in labs and places where
He could pursue his bent.

What is it in the pheromones
That make those scents we smell?
What's in aetherolea,
And compounds hard to spell?


Noel's mastered all that high-tech stuff:
Gas chromatography;
And what's that analytic tool?
Yes, mass spectrometry.

Some pesky ants, as I recall,
Fell victim to this craze
To split things up into their bits
And zap them to a haze.

His academic papers put
Our scientist on a roll
And so the Uni felt his door
Should herald "Doctor Noel".

And then some honours well deserved -
So Noel, please take a bow -
On you the boffins have bestowed
TWO chunky medals. Wow!

Congratulations and well done
For all that's in the past.
Now sixty years have rolled on by.
How did they come so fast?

Well Noel, your family and friends
Now join with you to make
This day a special one, so now
Let's hoe into that cake.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation. analytical chemist
B.Sc.Agr (Hons) 1975 Churchill Fellow 1988 PhD 1994. Worked in Central Science Laboratory at the University of Tasmania since 1979.
<http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/csl/csl/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=4087>
After 4 years at the University of NSW Noel joined the CSL in 1979 as a Research Fellow in Mass Spectrometry, and in 1984 was appointed Officer-in-Charge of the Mass Spectrometry and Vibrational Spectroscopy facilities. Since 1986 he has been associated exclusively with the Organic Mass Spectrometry facility. He has an honours degree in Agricultural Chemistry from the University of Sydney and a Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Tasmania. He was a Churchill Fellow in 1988, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1997, received an inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Award for Exceptional Performance in 1999, and a National Citation award from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 2006.

Noel married Sharn Kathleen Cooper on 10 Apr 1976. (Sharn Kathleen Cooper was born on 15 Jul 1952.)