news, local-news, UTAS, funding, Endowed Chair, David Warren, Sarah Aquilina, astrophysics, astrophysicist

Highly respected, Launceston-born astrophysicist Dr David Warren donated $2.6 to the University of Tasmania on Wednesday. The gift was the largest, single private donation the university has received in its 125-year history. It will help fund a $5 million Endowed Chair for the field of astrophysics, bearing Dr Warren’s name. Growing up in Kings Meadows in the 1950s, Dr Warren attended Punch Bowl Road State Primary, Kings Meadows High School and Launceston Matriculation College (now Launceston College). He lived a humble life, his father worked for the Department of Main Roads and his mother worked part-time as a comptometer (business calculator) operator, before training as an infant teacher. “My dad was a tradesman who spent 30 years painting the white lines on the roads,” Dr Warren said. “He was pulled out of high school at the age of 12 to work in his parent’s guest house, and always resented not having any further education.” Yearning for a better life for their son, Dr Warren’s parents told him he would need to go to university to make something of himself. “My parents knew enough to know the way out of poverty was education – that I would lead a more exciting and more prosperous life if I had an education,” Dr Warren said. Dr Warren recalled being surrounded by news and information about space from a young age. Newspaper articles, along with his dad’s natural skill with electrical work, and persistent encouragement from his parents, sparked the beginning of what would be an extremely successful career. “Mum started telling me that I was going to university to study astrophysics, and she started telling me that in kindergarten,” Dr Warren said. Dr Warren completed an undergraduate, honours and postgraduate in Tasmania between the 1970s and early ‘80s. Founder and non-executive director of tech company Altium Ltd, which creates Computer Aided Design software used by engineers to create printed circuit boards, Dr Warren said great teachers throughout high school made a significant impact on his overall education experience. The advanced computer course offered by Launceston Matriculation College in the 1970s was a fantastic headstart into the world of computing, Dr Warren said. A strong advocate reinvigorating higher education, Dr Warren said “funding the Chair is about strengthening the academic credentials of the university, strengthening the level in which we do research and creating the excitement in which helps to bring young people to the university.”

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