Curiosity led me to the substantial collection of Dyason’s personal papers in the University of Melbourne Archives. I found him to be a self-made expert, of the kind that interested me as an historian of the emergence in Australia of the science-based expert as an interpreter of social problems and their solution. Dyason’s diaries and letters revealed an interesting and complex character whose vitality and interest in the world around him offers insights into life in Australia just before and after World War I. He wasn’t unusual for his time in his faith in science but he was unusual in the lengths to which he went both in his pursuit of the idea and in his reaction to its frustration. This project, still in the making, is the result.

Cecily Hunter