Gary Bold
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Gary Edward John Bold (1938 – 3 July 2018) was a New Zealand
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
, an Honorary Associate Professor in physics at the
University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...
. After gaining a PhD in 1961, Bold became a lecturer who taught across all courses in the physics department at the University. His research areas included
underwater acoustics Underwater acoustics (also known as hydroacoustics) is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries. The water may be in the oce ...
and application of physics theory to understanding
human consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...
. He was highly regarded as a teacher and won the Prime Minister's Supreme Award at the 2004 Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards. Bold had an interest in amateur radio and as an active member of the New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters (NZART), won a prize for the quality of his columns in the organisation's newsletters.


Education

Bold received a doctoral degree in 1970 from the
University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...
. His doctoral thesis was titled ''Antipodal HF radio propagation''.


Teaching

While not becoming a lecturer until 1961, Bold began teaching in 1960 as an MSc student. Over his career, he taught every course in the physics department at the University of Auckland, including
geophysics Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and Physical property, properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct i ...
,
signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...
and
network theory In mathematics, computer science, and network science, network theory is a part of graph theory. It defines networks as Graph (discrete mathematics), graphs where the vertices or edges possess attributes. Network theory analyses these networks ...
. He also revised experiments and "designed the curriculum for many second- and third-year physics courses". in 2004, Bold told the
NZ Herald New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 600 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and l ...
that every year he had adapted and improved his teaching. He wrote on pedagogy and in 1996 co-authored an article for the American Journal of Physics that proposed a top-down model for teaching physics. The writers acknowledged that this "reversed the traditional model and was based on beginning all lecture treatments with discussions of complex, yet familiar phenomena and working backward to discussions of the simple physical laws underlying them". Early in his teaching career Bold realised that to be an effective lecturer he needed to develop his verbal skills so that the sessions were interesting for the students. He held that it was crucial for an educator to critically examine their delivery and look for and accept feedback. Many students and colleagues have attested to Bold's teaching expertise. In 2004, one student Bernadette Waller said of Bold:
He makes learning the material easy and interesting. He lectures in such an entertaining manner, inserting jokes, competitions and even songs into the work. He is one of the only lecturers who has managed to get responses to questions from students in class.
Tom Barnes, University of Auckland Deputy Vice-chancellor (Research) at the time, claimed that Bold taught him how to teach and because "his knowledge asencyclopaedic and his enthusiasm boundless... is.. lecture preparation assimply the best I have ever come across." Barnes added that Bold had a commitment to his students that went beyond the lecture hour and "time and again I have seen him surrounded at the end by a group of animated young people eager to bounce ideas off him and know more."


Selected research


Environmental underwater acoustics

Bold co-authored an article in the ''Marine Technology Society Journal'' that summarises the work of the New Zealand group in the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) programme from 1991 to 1996. The article explains in the introduction that underwater sound could be a way of measuring global
ocean warming Ocean heat content (OHC) or ocean heat uptake (OHU) is the energy absorbed and stored by oceans, and is thus an important indicator of Climate change, global warming. Ocean heat content is calculated by measuring ocean temperature at many differe ...
and earlier research had noted "that a sound source placed at Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean would allow uninterrupted straight line paths for underwater sound to travel to great distances, including both coasts of North America... nd..a feasibility experiment was conducted in 1991 leading to the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) program." The article traces the involvement of the New Zealand group, beginning with the Heard Island Feasibility Test (RIFT) which attempted to see whether underwater sound from a sound projecting source could be detected at long ranges. The results were mixed with a lack of detectable signals at times, attributed to internal waves and a larger source being needed. A strong signal from Heard Island was however, observed close to Tasmania. Bold was involved in research that looked at ways to determine oceanic acoustic transfer functioning and co-authored a study ''"Signals for optimum band limited system interrogation with application to underwater acoustics"'' which gives an illustration of the use of Stepped frequency chirps in an underwater experiment.


High frequency radio propagation

Bold's thesis in 1970, follows up the work of previous researchers into the problems around the propagation of
HF radio High frequency (HF) is the ITU designation for the band of radio waves with frequency between 3 and 30 megahertz (MHz). It is also known as the decameter band or decameter wave as its wavelengths range from one to ten decameters (ten to one ...
and explores the effects happening at antipodal distances, with a goal of developing a model of propagation that reflects these. The research concludes that it is possible to calculate the "distribution of power near the antipode of an HF transmitter", and factors such as "frequency fluctuations" can be included into a realistic model.


Numerical ray tracing

A paper co-authored by Bold in 1986, showed evidence that when a system is broken down into its compositional parts, (top down approach) ray tracing is accurate and easy to apply. The authors note that compared to a more traditional approach of mixing rather than isolating the steps in the process, the top down approach using computing power has the potential to develop knowledge of "powerful integration subroutines... nd..their extraordinary accuracy makes the payoff worth the effort expended in understanding their use." In 1981 Bold collaborated on a project that explored an improved model at the time, for getting better ray calculations by using bounded beams to modify ray paths with a uniform sound speed profile in the Pekeris channel. The authors concluded that this can affect the eigenray yields, nd appeared"to be as good as normal mode theory for practical calculations in shallow water".


Human consciousness

A study in 2009 used EEG to measure simultaneous occurrence at two electrode sites of brainwaves within a broad frequency band, and notes "episodic global phase synchrony" swidely identified. The study said the data validated using EEG in this process, and concludes: "If long-range phase synchrony really is a hallmark of consciousness, it should be present most of the time the subject is conscious. Our results confirm this prediction, and suggest that consciousness may involve not only gamma frequencies, but the whole range from theta to epsilon." Bold contributed to research that explored the
hypothesis A hypothesis (: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess o ...
that a person's
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...
may not be continuous. The paper published in 2011 and co-authored by Bold, said in the introduction that the concept had been around a long time and the question asked was whether an individual's consciousness could be a "series of "discrete chunks or perceptual moments... imilar to.. cinematographic frames". Data from waking and unconscious people were gathered to compare the "frequency of local
minima In mathematical analysis, the maximum and minimum of a function are, respectively, the greatest and least value taken by the function. Known generically as extremum, they may be defined either within a given range (the ''local'' or ''relative'' ...
in the analytic power (AP) using intracranial EEG (ECoG)." The results indicated that local minima in AP could have acted as a "shutter", and that consciousness may be discontinuous because of the consequence of oscillations that are widely found in nature, and "not due to some specifically biological factor".


Associations

Bold was a life member of the New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters (NZART) and contributed regularly to ''Break-In'', the journal of that organisation. He was acknowledged as a "well known CW operator... nd..a great teacher...who was a long time member of the Chicken Fat Operators club, devoted entirely to
Morse Code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
." Bold - known at the time as Morseman - is credited with writing the software for TeachMorse, a
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
application that provided a means of playing practice text at different speeds.


Further publications

C.T. Tindle, M.K. Guthrie, G.E.J. Bold, T.G. Birdsall et al.: "Measurements of the frequency dependence of normal modes", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 64, number 4, 1978, pp 1178–1185. G.E.J. Bold: "Power distribution near the antipode of a short-wave transmitter", Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 31, 1969, pp 1391–1411. Gary E.J. Bold: "Simple computer network analysis", IEEE Transactions on Education, E-30(2), May 1987, pp 99 – 102. Summary Gary E.J. Bold, and Sze M. Tan: "Teaching simulation with a "digital" analog computer ". American Journal of Physics, 53(4), 1985, pp 437 – 442


Awards

For what was noted as his "articles throughout the year and the previous thirty odd years before!", Bold won the New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters (NZART) Break-In Award for the ''Best Columnist Article'' in 2017. Bold won the Prime Minister's Supreme Award at the 2004 Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards, which included a prize of NZD$30,000. Upon receiving the award, his advice was to "seek out the excellent practitioners, and shamelessly adapt their ideas. They'll be delighted." He also told the NZ Herald, that after 43 years of teaching he was "getting the hang of university teaching" and working with the "best and brightest young minds had kept him young... nd been..an amazing experience."


References


External links


Staff entry
- University of Auckland {{DEFAULTSORT:Bold, Gary Amateur radio people University of Auckland alumni Academic staff of the University of Auckland 1938 births 2018 deaths 20th-century New Zealand physicists 21st-century New Zealand physicists