Paul Wild (Australian scientist)

John Paul Wild AC CBE FRS FRSA FTSE FAA (17 May 1923 – 10 May 2008) was a British-born Australian scientist.

Following service in World War II as a radar officer in the Royal Navy, he became a radio astronomer in Australia for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the fore-runner of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

John Paul Wild was born in Sheffield, England on 17 May 1923, the fourth son of wealthy cutlery manufacturer, Alwyn Wild, and his wife Bessie.

But in that year, Alwyn's business collapsed and he went to the United States of America to sell his patents and technology for cutlery manufacture.

In the event, he never returned.

Bessie moved with her boys to Croydon, near London.

About this Wild said "We went from riches to rags and the family was absolutely struggling" and "... right on the breadline, very, very poor."

It was to be five or six years before a divorce settlement allowed the family to "live a reasonable middle-class life, reasonably well off".

His childhood was a happy one, with his "imperialistic grandfather" having a strong influence in his upbringing.

At age six he was hospitalised for six months after being hit by a lorry when alighting from a tram, cracking his skull.

Then at age seven he attended a Sussex boarding school, Ardingly College, the youngest boy in the school and very homesick.

But after successfully "plotting to get out" with his elder brother for four terms he spent the rest of his schooling at Croydon: first at The Limes (Old Palace of John Whitgift School) – at that time a preparatory school – then at the associated senior independent school, Whitgift School.

The driving intellectual curiosity that was to distinguish Paul Wild was evident from an early age.

He said, "[My mother] showed great appreciation if ever I was successful in anything but she didn't push me."

He was interested in building things with model house kits, Meccano and cardboard; an early gift of a Hornby train from his mother started him on his lifelong love of trains.

Then he "read about the great man Isambard Kingdom Brunel and all his works, which were not only railways but the extraordinary ships that he built at the time. Well, I suppose he was the first source of inspiration to me."

He became an avid player and follower of cricket while at school and into adulthood: in his later life he was known as "a walking encyclopaedia of cricket knowledge", eventually owning all but one edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.

Wild developed a strong love of mathematics from a very early age.

After matriculating he spent three years in the mathematical sixth form, most of the time on mathematics, with a little physics and world affairs.

In free periods he and his friends would play bridge, under the chestnut trees in summertime.

In the summer of 1940, real excitement was added to the lives of the bridge-playing mathematics students: the Battle of Britain was going on overhead.

"There was no sense of danger, it was all marvellous fun. Croydon [a Spitfire and Hurricane base] was right in the thick of it, and we used to watch the air battles going on."

World War II determined Paul Wild's specialisation and intruded to foreshorten his entire university life to only five terms.

In 1942, Wild went to the University of Cambridge (Peterhouse) to further his mathematics.

However, after a year of mathematics he knew that he would only be able to stay on if he did something relevant to the national war effort.

Thus he went straight into "physics with radio": Part 2 Physics.

He said"the great majority of people in Part 2 Physics had already done two years of it before, so it was a real challenge. But I enjoyed it very much, and I was very inspired by the sort of grandeur of the approach, the wonders of quantum mechanics and relativity …. It was hard work, it was six days a week. That's how I became a physicist."

After the second year, having concluded five terms in all, he had a choice of joining one of the three armed services or going into radar research or industry.

On his "free" day each week he had been trained in the Home Guard, but his great interest in ships and the sea led him to join the Royal Navy.

A wartime Bachelor of Arts degree was conferred a year later.

In the 1950s and 1960s he made discoveries based on radio observations of the Sun.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s his team built and operated the world's first solar radio-spectrographs and subsequently the Culgoora radio-heliograph, near Narrabri, New South Wales.

The Paul Wild Observatory at Culgoora is named after him.

In 1972 Paul Wild invented Interscan, a standard microwave landing system.

From 1978 to 1985 he was chairman of the CSIRO, during which time he expanded the organisation's scope and directed its restructuring.

He retired from the CSIRO to lead (from 1986) the Very Fast Train Joint Venture, a private sector project that sought to build a high-speed railway between Australia's two most populous cities.

Lack of support from government brought it to an end in 1991.

In his later years he worked on gravitational theory.

In an interview in 1992 he said: "We had three specialist mathematics teachers covering analysis, calculus and modern geometry, and I think I owe a lot to them."

Whitgift School is near what was then Croydon Aerodrome.