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ROBERT DAVID POPE,FIBA The son of a Welsh cyanide plant operator and a third generation Australian mother, Robert Pope wsa born on 9 December, 1939, in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. He is listed in the 1998 Dictionary of International Biography, including its dedication section, and in Marquis Who's Who in the World, 1997, 1998. As an artist and philosopher, for over twenty five years he has been engaged in bridging the gap between science and art. His life's work, to modernise the ancient Greek Epiucurean Science for Ethical Ends into a Creative Physics, came about through a quest to discover a blueprint for human survival. In 1979 he instigated a successful research programme that established the world's first rigorous mathematics and physics of morphogenesis - a science of life. In his published modification to Leonardo daVinci's "Theory of Knowledge" he correctly predicted the discovery of a vast new bio-science and technology, eventually made by Australian researchers in 1993. His work was assessed as encompassing a "revolution of thought as important to science and humanity as the Copernican and Newtonian revolution". He developed his ideas into a philosophy of medicine that independently outlined, in general terms, the mechanisms upon which the 1997 Australian nano-machine science of medicine technology was based, making headlines around the world. Badly affected by the death of his mother in 1954, Robert Pope left home at fifteen and travelled to northern Queensland, where he cut suarcane in order to finance his secondary education and the first year of a diploma of geology at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1958, during his National Service training, he was selected for a course at the military's, Balcome School of Survey in Victoria. For several years he worked as a geophysical draughtsman and seismologist with several oil and mineral companies operating throughout the vast Australian outback. In 1964 he settled in Alice Springs in the centre of the continent and became nationally recognised for his paintings of the unique Australian landscape. In 1966 he married Rita marie Muller, opened the Pope Art Gallery and won the Northern Terrritory's Caltex Art Prize. In 1969 he left Alice Springs for Perth, in Western Australia, liaising with the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority, at his own expense he successfully opened a special art school for Aborigines. From this experience he became convinced that Western science, by excluding human creativity, was built on completely false assumptions. Over the next several years he organised a series of science-art workshops involving scientists and artists. In 1973 he received a State government bursary for further research into the relationship between the two cultures of science and art. In 1978 Robert Pope was appointed an Artist-in-residence at the University of Adelaide, where he argued that it was feasible to develop a modern Creative Physics based on the classic Epicurean Science for Ethical Ends. Investigating these claims, in 1979 the Science Unit of Australian National Television documented his work in the eight-part series, "The ScientistsProfiles of Discovery", shown internationally. That year, UNESCO arranged his appointment as a special Astralian artist delegate to the 2nd Marcel Grossman Meeting, held at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste to honour the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth. Returning from Italy, he founded the Science-Art Research Centre in the Riverland of South Australia, where the local government appointed him Artist-in-residence to the town of Berri. In August 1980 a special Science-Art issue of Scientific Australian was entirely dedicated to his "noble" venture to establish a Creative Physics from Greek philosophy. In 1986 Robert Pope became an artist-in-residence to a cancer research laboratory at the University of Sydney. The Science-Art Centrre then sponsored mathematician Chris Illert's morphogenic papers, which were published in Italy's leading science journal, Il Nuovo Cimento. In 1990 two of the papers were reprinted in the SPIE Milestone Series, washington, and cited as being amongst the most important 20th century scientific works. In 1995 the Hadronic Journal Society, USA, published a special supplement devoted to this work, which received acclaim for the exposition of new physics laws governing optimum human biological growth and development, a culmination of objectives stated some 16 years earlier. Seeing this new physics as an essential foundation for future global democracy, he and his artist colleague, Robert Todonai, explained the work and its background in "Two Bob's Worth". The book was well received at its launch in Los Angeles in 1989, under the auspices of the Hollywood Thalian Mental Health Organisation. On his return to Australia, the Dunmore Lang College at Macquarie University, Sydney, awarded him the Dorothy Knox Fellowship for Distinguished Persons. In 1990 the Art Encyclopedia, Artists and Galleries of Australia honoured him by reproducing one of his science-art paintings on the front cover. Mr Pope maintains that fractals are images of a universal negentropic complex dynamical system and their association with geometries, used by ancient Greek philosophers to explain acquisition of wisdom through beauty, hold a vital clue toward establishing a more profound and humane philosophy of science. He sees the new Creative Physics as essentially counterbalancing the present destructive science based upon the incorrect assumption that the universe is in a state of total decay. the Science-Art Centre now uses art as a catalyst to centralise data for human survival and betterment of the global human condition. Built by Robert Pope and Robert Todonai, it is an imposing stone mansion set amongst tropical landscaped gardens with an inspiring view of Mt Warning, in the beautiful Tweed Valley of Northern New South Wales. Distinguished scientists and academics worldwide have written supporting its work. Incorporated in 1995, it received Approved Research Institute Status from the Australian government. In 1996 it advised the government that it was possible to extrapolate a Creative Physics from classical philosophy. It was recently invited to put together a science-art exhibition to tour Australia and travel overseas, following a proposal of major significance made by Mr Pope to link distinguished scientists and academics throughout the world in designing the theme for such an exhibition. Abiography of Robert Pope, FIBA, appears in the main section of this edition.
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