Jan 11
30
Vale Leon Kane Maguire
I first met Leon Kane Maquire in 2009 when I was asked to write a commercialization strategy for the Australian Centre of Research Excellence for Electromaterials
(ACES).
When I start work on a project that requires strategy I normally start with the people, and ask them to tell me why they are doing what they are doing, and ask them to explain to me what they are doing, and what they think needs to be done.
To my mind it is always about people.
People invent things, they think things, the want things, they need things, they buy things, they sell things. Its not about technology. Its about people. Technology never has problems. Only people do. And it is people who solve problems – sometimes thinking that they use technology to solve it, but more often than not, solutions are really found by better understanding and better communications.
Leon Kane Maguire was one of the first people I met at IPRI in Wollongong, one node of ACES. He was one of those people that make you welcome wherever you are, that are enthusiastic about life and what they do – just a great guy. He was also one of Australia's leading thinkers in the area of nanomaterials. He helped me, as someone that was another world, be welcomed in to the esoteric world of science that he inhabited, which was extremely generous. And whenever I bumped into him we shared a joke and had a chat.
At the end of 2010 he was made Emeritus Professor and at the same time he officially retired. But unofficially he continued to collaborate with those around him on grant applications, the epi-centre of academic research funding in Australia. And he continued to inspire those around him. It was a really great shock for me when I was told during last week that Leon had died suddenly. I just couldn't believe that someone so alive and energetic could suddenly be struck down. It was a shock.
But there it is.
I will miss seeing Leon in the hallways of the research centre….
And that only a week after someone else from my past tragically died – Steve Prestwich, the drummer from Cold Chisel. A lovely bloke, a great songwriter, and a tremendous drummer… Vale Steve Prestwich.
It all goes to show that we have to live our lives in the moment. We have to be doing that which we truly care about as much time as is possible.
