The MacDiarmid Institute turns 20

In the 2012 recording, Sir Paul Callaghan, who had in early 2001 moved from Massey to VUW to take up the position as Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences, speaks of being asked to lead the VUW bid: “I guess it would have been about August, September 2001, that somehow or other, I got asked to lead a bid from Victoria University. Jim Johnston was Head of School at the time said, “Paul why don’t you do it,” Jim was no doubt busy enough and it seemed like a tall order that we would get the money, a long shot just like Marsden grants and all these other things. But I didn’t have any major administrative responsibilities, I wasn’t a Head of School, I was a professor teaching at University, I had time on my hands, and I thought why not that would be fun.  

“And so we put together an EOI and we called it ‘The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials’.”  

Having seen the round of bids that had come through to the Tertiary Education Commission in the first EOI application process, Paul says his VUW colleague Joe Trodahl said to him “Paul, why don’t we get together with the Canterbury lot and form a joint bid?.” Paul says it just seemed such an obvious thing to do. “I’m very grateful for Joe’s suggestion. Many of the people involved were erstwhile collaborators of ours, people like Steve Durbin, like Roger Reeves, Simon Brown and others. And the bid from Christchurch was led by a man called Richard Blaikie.”   

Richard Blaikie is rather humble on this point: “It’s a fairer reflection to say the NEST group was a true collective, not so much that the bid was led by me.” He smiles: “Because I was overseas at the time of the meeting, I was nominated to lead the Canterbury bid in my absence.”  

He says there had been a building of capacity at Canterbury across physics, chemistry and electrical engineering for some time: “We had a group of young and up and coming people, and had run the Queenstown founding event, which I like to call AMN0, organised by Simon and Joe (Trodahl), so there were already good connections between us and the VUW material scientists.” 

Simon Brown says he always had the sense that the Canterbury researchers were the new arrivals compared with the Wellington crowd who were well established names such as Paul Callaghan and Jeff Tallon. “So it was natural thing to bring together the heavy hitters and the young upstarts.” 

Richard Blaikie says that although the Canterbury researchers were younger and more junior than the VUW team, they had an advantage

“We were the real exciting nanotechnologists in the country. They needed our vibrancy and the nano side of things. But if Canterbury had stuck to a separate bid, we’d have been going up against the leadership of Sir Paul; it would likely have been mutually assured destruction.”  

Like any birth, it wasn’t entirely straightforward. Richard said the University of Canterbury leadership took quite some convincing that Canterbury should give up its EOI and join forces as junior institute partner to the VUW-led bid:  

“As Paul said, bragging rights are ultimately what universities care most about and these were not easily given up by the Canterbury leadership who were really wanting a Canterbury-led bid. Paul Callaghan was very persuasive, but ultimately the decision was an internal Canterbury one.”  

Richard says once the decision had been made to join forces, there were multiple hurdles: further months of showing the government that this combined bid was a genuine collaboration: 

“We had to show a united front to the panel led by (former Governor General) Sir Paul Reeves. It was clear our combined bid would be a partnership with full collaboration. There was always a double-act kind of approach in the presentations. I had the privilege to lead many of the presentations for example to Michael Cullen and others.”  

Richard says that as a result, a lot of his time on sabbatical leave (at MIT) was spent on phone calls: “I was taken to meetings ‘in a box’ – one of those early black polycom speaker phones - and I’d dial in.” 

Fellow founding Investigator (and now Emeritus Professor) Alison Downard, who was brought into the Canterbury meetings at that time, recalls Richard dialling into meetings on the polycom speaker phone. “Richard was definitely a major driver of the bid development.” 

University of Otago researcher Keith Gordon, who was involved in the VUW bid, says it was interesting to see how Sir Paul couched it:  

“The mentality of how to work collaboratively with people didn’t exist much in NZ, because you needed to move from a to b to do that. Interacting within NZ wasn’t valued. This had created a certain culture that Paul pretty much didn’t agree with. He managed to convince the government that these people really did want to work together, which they did. And when promoting the Institute in later years, he would be adamant that the success of someone in Auckland or Canterbury was success of the Institute.”  

(Left to Right) Professors Richard Blaikie, Jeff Tallon, Alison Downard, Keith Gordon and Joe Trodahl

Simon Brown adds, “it was a real credit to Paul that he went out of his way to make sure that Canterbury, as a co-host of the Institute, shared the limelight as much as possible. For example, it was very common in those days for politicians to be pointed towards the Canterbury nanofabrication facilities.”  

Jeff Tallon who wrote the first half of the combined bid recalls that David Bibby, who was Pro Vice-Chancellor of Science, Engineering, and Architecture and Design at VUW at the time, had been working to bring together the chemists and the physicists:  

“David had been speaking with me about my coming to VUW, which I eventually did, and the two of us then convinced Paul Callaghan to come to VUW about six months later. All these movements were directly around the planned establishment of a new materials science institute at VUW that bridged chemistry and physics. Jim Johnston (who was head of chemistry at the time) and I had been drafting a document of establishment for this – the ‘Rutherford’ Institute was a working title.”  

But then, he says, the government announced the invitation to establish CoREs and invited bids:  

“It was obvious this was a better thing and better funded, so we switched to drafting the CoRE bid. When we were about halfway through, Paul Callaghan came onto the scene. To me it was very clear that if Paul was around, the bid would be better led by him with his political name and whole approach with the public – it was just what we needed.”    

Jeff says Paul Callaghan then took over writing the bid: “He came back to me and asked me to draft the final closing statement, which was incidentally used by the Minister of Science on a number of occasions to articulate the vision for CoREs:” 

(final para of the combined bid)  

Ngā tapuwae 

We close with a few general observations. Scientific advancement is not fundamentally predicated on the breakthroughs of a few elite individuals but is a collective movement of peer understanding. We build on ngā tapuwae o ngā tupuna - the footsteps of our intellectual predecessors. We build for ngā tapuwae o ngā mokopuna – the footsteps of our intellectual descendants. Though we honour the famous, find inspiration in their tenacity or insight and perhaps model our own ideals on theirs, no individual is indispensable to the progress of science. The absence of a Newton may have tethered the march of science for a mere ten years or so and made little difference to its current state. No individual captures knowledge as his exclusive domain nor should the resources used in the pursuit of knowledge be subject to exclusive capture. Scientific endeavour and technological application are social activities that work best when organised so that the total is much more than the sum of the parts. The challenge of organised science is to harness the champions, use them as mentors and guiding lights but within a team context where individuals may come and go but the peer unit advances from strength to strength. These principles are fervently espoused by the MacDiarmid Institute. We acknowledge ngā tapuwae o ngā tupuna and commit to establish on a sure footing ngā tapuwae o ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa. 

Keith says Paul led the change in the culture: “Someone had to pull it all together and convince the more senior university staff to take the chance and convince government to shell out a ton of money.”  

Joe Trodahl agrees: “The bid was successful in no small part to Paul’s personality. He connected very well with everyone. He could speak just as easily to politicians as to the whole country. That’s what made the big difference.” 

So an Institute was born, on 1 July 2002, beginning as it meant to go on as a true partnership, initially between researchers at VUW, Canterbury, Industrial Research Institute Limited (now Callaghan Innovation), Otago, Massey and GNS, and later extending to include Auckland and Callaghan Innovation. The genetic pedigree was clear, building on ‘Ngā tapuwae o ngā tupuna’- the footsteps of our ancestors - or in this case, intellectual predecessors - much like any new life. And like any new creature, the total was immediately more than the sum of its parts.

No one has been able to describe exactly where they were when they heard news of the success of the bid, beyond saying that it was likely that bottles of champagne were bought. Simon reckons they were pretty confident: “By the time the bid went in, there was a sense we’d nailed it. We knew what the panel was looking for. We benefited enormously from Paul’s understanding of politics and sense of what was needed to make this an outstanding bid. It was very clear the director had to have mana, as Paul did, as well as Jeff (Tallon) and others involved.  

“Richard, Jeff and all the others made an excellent team. And we were just so fortunate to have Paul Callaghan as our figurehead.” 

Read next in the MacDiarmid Institute Annual Report 2022

First Director's piece 2003

Tags: paul callaghan, maan alkaisi, simon brown, steve durbin, roger reeves, richard blaikie, joe trodahl, alan macdiarmid, jim johnston, alison downard, keith gordon, jeff tallon, Annual Report 2022