Geoffrey Wickham

Geoffrey G. Wickham AO MIIE was one of the pioneers of cardiac pacemaking , born at Camperdown, Victoria, Australia on October 28th 1933. In 1963 he co-founded Telectronics Pty Ltd in Sydney, and served as the company's Technical Director from 1963 to 1978. He is an Honorary Life Governor of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney (elected September 1982) and was appointed Officer Of The Order Of Australia in June 2000 "for service to the design of medical equipment, particularly in the development of the implantable cardiac pacemaker". His accomplishments are remarkable in that he had no formal engineering training, finishing High School at year 8 to commence work as a radio/electrical repairman. At age 21 he passed the year 12 examinations by night study at the Adelaide School of Mines, while working as a senior technician at the Department of Supply Long Range Weapons Establishment in South Australia, and being appointed the same year on merit as an electrical engineer at graduate level by the Netherlands Philips company subsididiary TCA. In 1958-9 he studied application of the new technology of the transistor at Philips establishments in Holland and England; being relocated after that to Philips' Sydney headquarters. In 1964, after being co-founding technical director of Telectronics Pty Ltd in 1963, the company was invited to participate in artificial cardiac pacemaker research in which co-founder Noel Gray and he made significant contributions. His involvement as a director of Telectronics ceased in about 1982. Subsequently, while continuing involvement in bio-engineering particularly in paediatrics, he studied aerodynamics and structural engineering which led to construction of a personal aircraft which was awarded the SAAA prize of the "Henry Millicer Best Australian Technical Innovation and Design" in 1998. In a recent talk with Geoff he said inter alia " You have to have passion" ! Geoff was the recipient of Engineers Australia "David Dewhurst Award" for 2007.