Be prepared for a surprise. The outlook is not all black.

The best way to find a ray of light is to go to Canberra --- now don't be like that! Canberra does have attractions and one is the walk along the lakeside from the National Library to the National Gallery. At the Library end you will see a row of grey, upturned pothooks about waist high. Each bears the name and pic of an Australian of the Year beginning with Sir Mac Burnett in 1960. Yes, he, a scientist, was the first Australian of the Year and Sir John Eccles followed him in 1963. A promising start for the scientific clan. In between came Joan Sutherland (not yet a Dame) and Jock Sturrock, yachtsman, who took The America's Cup from the Americans.

If the Australian of the Year title were always given to ultra-worthy people it would have become a dusty relic of the establishment, but the Australia Day Committee has moved the goal posts since those early awards in the 1960s. In 1979 they added a supplementary title -- Young Australian of the Year. Later came two more so that now each year salutes four people - AotY, Young ditto, Senior AotY and Local Hero. Where one was planted, four now grow.

You will have guessed that sports people have taken the biggest bite of the AofY cherry -- 13 in the 46 years since Sir Mac Burnett opened the score. Oh hell, this is Oz. Ozzies can't help putting sports people up in lights. Obsessions will out.

But guess which kind of Australian people come second to sports?

Scientists. Nine scientists. Here they are --

Burnett 1960
 

Eccles 1963
 

John Cornforth 1975
 

John Yu 1996
 

Peter Doherty 1997
 

Sir Gus Nossal 2000
 

Prof Fiona Stanley 2003
 

Dr Fiona Wood 2005
 

Prof Ian Frazer 2006.

There are also several supplementaries. Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop was AotY in 1976, famous for his medical work in and out of a POW camp. And in 1990 Sir Fred Hollows, ophthalmologist extraordinaire, took the award. Was he a straight out scientist? Certainly he applied science to great effect. And two more supplementaries from the Young AotY list -- in 1999 the title went to Dr Bryan Gagnsler, astronomer, and in 2002 it went to Scott Hocknull, palaeontologist. And, oh yes, the 2001 Senior of the Year was Prof Graeme Clark, a pioneer of the bionic ear.


Adding them all up, 14 men and women of the Australian scientific community have won honours -- one more than the league of sports people.

It is worth noting that lawyers, politicians, business persons, philanthropists, public servants and other stuffed shirts make at best token appearances. Journalists score nil, as you have already anticipated. Of churchmen there have been only two: Cardinal Gilroy and Archbishop Peter Hollingworth whose career came to a sticky end.

One blank area is notable and regrettable: not one educator has been judged an Australian of the Year. This is understandable in that educators are usually tied to their localities or regions. A vice-chancellor of the university of Upper Talarook might work superbly but he/she would probably be unknown 500 kilometres away. Education is difficult to hype on the national stage.

It is easy to comb through the list of winners and to indulge in fine analysis after fine analysis but that's to make too much of the institution. After all, at best the AotY award is a celebration of some pretty fine citizens and at worst is a dab of feel-good xenophobia, a weapon for manipulating the citizenry into liking their government. (The Australia Day Committee makes the award but it is difficult not to see the Department of the Prime Minister in the background.)

None of the people mentioned above represent science as such. The honours go to their careers, their achievements and their personalities. None to the harder-to-see triumphs in haematology, renewable energy or soil preservation.

All that said, the Australian of the Year lists do have value to the scientific tribe. They show that science per se is not a negative factor in public estimation. The public at large are happy to applaud scientific attainments so long as they can see good outcomes -- one is tempted to say people are as pleased with a successful scientist as with a star of sport.

Who'd have thought it?

Everyone is free to nominate a candidate and the rolls are now open. If you have a notable, attractive scientist in mind -- or better still an educator, you could start at www.australianoftheyear.gov.au