Walter Boas and Physics of Solids in Australia

In the 1930s, the world s greatest migration of scientists took place under the lash of Nazism. It has sometimes been asserted that Hitler may have lost the War because of the talent he forced to flee, and that the American development of the atomic bomb that shortened the War so drastically might have been much slower without that migration. Other, less cataclysmic, consequences also flowed from the migration, and this Section is devoted to one of them. 

A book of scientific articles in celebration of Boas s 75th birthday (Borland et al. 1979) includes a biographical sketch of Boas by J.F. Nicholas. A substantial account of his life can be found in an obituary by Clarebrough and Head (1987). 

However, none of what has happened recently can detract from the contribution made by Walter Boas, that eminent physicist of solids, to the scientific life of his adopted and beloved country. 

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