Noble, Robert Jackson (RJ)
Born in the Sydney suburb of Five Dock, Noble studied at Sydney High School in the years 1908 to 1911, the University of Sydney Faculty of Agriculture from 1912 to 1915 and the University of Minnesota in USA (1921-1923) from which he graduated as MSc in 1922 and PhD in 1923. Noble's description of student days at the University of Sydney appears in the Faculty of Agriculture Jubilee Year Book 1960.
During World War I, Noble enlisted in the Australian Infantry Forces (AIF), from 1915 to 1919. After armistice, he received an appointment as lecturer in Agriculture at the AIF Agriculural Training Depot in Hampshire England.
The University of Sydney awarded Noble the Belmore Scholarship for Chemistry and Geology, the Maiden prizes for Agricultural Botany (1914) and Forestry (1915), the University Medal in 1915 and the Fuller Travelling Research Scholarship. Minnesota University accorded him its Outstanding Achievement Award Medal and Citation in 1951. In 1959, on his retirement from the NSW Public Service, he was awarded the Farrer Memorial Medal. Noble was also honoured with Coronation Medals in 1937 and 1953, the Jubliee Medal in 1953 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1957.
The University of Sydney employed Noble as a temporary lecturer in late 1930 to give a course of lectures in Mycology to students in Botany III (ref.1). At the time, Noble was Chief Biologist with the NSW Government Department of Agriculture. He first joined this Department as a cadet in 1913; in 1920, he was
appointed assistant biologist and in 1940, Under Secretary, Director and Permanent Head. During his time at the University of Minnesota, the USA Government Department of Agriculture had employed him as Collaborator of Cereal Smut Investigations.
In his early years at the NSW Goverment Department of Agriculture, Noble was especially concerned with the disease known as flag smut, the most serious disease of cereals in Australia at the time. He studied this disease, caused by a fungal parasite, during his years at the University of Minnesota. Subsequently, Noble and three others compiled the first detailed list of plant diseases in NSW. Noble introduced the mushroom industry to Australia as well as "a new scientific approach to farming", drew up guidelines for "effective plant quarantine" and "moulded the Department of Agriculture into an organisation relevant and sensitive to the farmers' needs" (ref. 2).
References
1. Archives G18 Salaries Register vol 8 folio 2 and G50 series 8 item 2 and G50 (Biological Sciences): correspondence between Noble and Osborne 1930.
2. From R Meadows "R J Noble 1894-1981" in the Agricultural Gazette of NSW (1981) volume 92, pages 7-11.
Other sources of information for these biographical notes:
Archives P82 and the Obituary to Noble published in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW (1982) volume 115, page 74.
This collection mainly documents Noble's undergraduate days at the University of Sydney. Photographs cited in the 1976 accession are assumed to have been incorporated into the Archives miscellaneous photograph collection.