The guest speaker for our meeting on 23 April 2024 is Dr Stan Gottschalk. Stan was born in the US in 1946. He grew up in Florida and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before emigrating to Australia in 1970, finishing his PhD in Fluid Mechanics at the University of Melbourne (1973).

He moved to Tasmania in 1975, where he has worked as Head of Mathematics and Science at Oakburn College, and as a Lecturer at the TSIT/UTAS), before joining the Australian Maritime College where he was instrumental in setting up the College’s professional engineering degree programs in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering before his retirement in 2001.

The Arts have always been a part of Stan’s life. Active in the local theatre scene, he has worked as director, actor, production manager, and designer on over 40 productions, and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Theatre Council of Tasmania in 2021.

Stan is also a Life Member of the Launceston Film Society. He was part of a team that revitalised it in the late 1970s, taking it from about a dozen members to the 1,100 members it has today. He is also a respected folk musician both as a solo performer and with his band The New Holland Honey Eaters.