It’s hard to imagine a time before Wi-Fi – or what we’d do without it. Especially, if you’re under the age of 25. But thanks to the work of some brilliant Australian scientists, wireless internet is a part of our everyday lives.

Our guest for this episode is Professor David Skellern, one of the Australian scientists who won the race in the late 1990’s to get functioning wireless technology to market. In their words, they had cut the wires that computers needed to talk to each other.

Professor David Skellern shares his research and life journey with us, taking us back to his early days working in radio astronomy. Then, how he combined that experience with his love of mathematics, and his background as an electronic engineer, to eventually get to a point where he knew Wi-Fi was possible. Finally, how he helped bring that idea to fruition.

It’s a fascinating journey!  Our host for this episode is Dr James Nichols, a mathematician and Lecturer at the Australian National University.

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Bonus Links

• 1997 IEEE Paper with Prof Skellern & CSIRO’s Wi-Fi proposal: https://www.academia.edu/79704289/A_high_speed_wireless_LAN
• Hewlett Packard 12c Financial Calculator mentioned in episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_Voyager_series#12C
• HP vision-of-the-future video mentioned in episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPKX5iuBvZg