Making Australian History

Australian history has been revised and reinterpreted by successive generations of historians, writers, governments and public commentators, yet there has been no account of the ways it has changed, who makes history and how. Making Australian History responds to this critical gap in Australian historical research.

Does history repeat itself in meaningful ways, or is each problem unique? How can a knowledge of Australian history enhance our understanding of the present and prepare us for the future?

This book is an abbreviated, partly re-written version of "Under the Radar - The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott." It addresses a general readership interested in historical and sociological aspects of astronomy and presents the biography of Ruby Payne-Scott (1912 – 1981). As the first female radio astronomer (and one of the first people in the world to consider radio astronomy), she made classic contributions to solar radio physics.