Mike Gore (physicist)

Gore died on 8 January 2022, in Canberra. He was 87 years old.

Gore was a scientific advisor to the ABC television series "Towards 2000". He established the ANU's Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) in 1995. In 2010, Gore was a founding member of The Faraday Club, established by Dr Howie Firth, MBE, of the Orkney International Science Festival, to recognise science communicators of international standing and named after Michael Faraday, leading English scientist of the nineteenth century.

Gore established Questacon, the national science centre, in Canberra in 1980. It was the first interactive science centre in the country. It was originally based in the recently shuttered, historic Ainslie Public School (built 1927). He was inspired to set up the centre after visiting the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1976. Questacon moved to the permanent building on Lake Burley Griffin in 1988, after Gore left academia the year before to become the foundation director of Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre. He retired back to academia in 1999, working as an adjunct professor in science communication.

At the conclusion of his studies, Gore was offered a post-doctoral position at Brown University for nine months, as well as the position of lecturer in physics at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. He accepted both positions after arranging a deferral of the starting date of the latter, and consequently immigrated to Australia in 1962. He later became a Professor, and in 1987 left the ANU and was later styled Professor Emeritus. As at early 2015, Gore was a Sessional Lecturer at the ANU, based at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Michael Miles Gore AO (5 September 1934 – 8 January 2022) was a British-born Australian engineer, physicist, and science explainer, who worked at the Australian National University in Canberra. He was noted for being the founder of Questacon, the first interactive science centre in Australia.

Gore was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on 5 September 1934. He was the only child of May Robinson and Ernest Gore, who worked as an electrical engineer. Gore attended Worsley Technical School for two years, before completing his secondary education at Bolton Senior Tech. He first graduated with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. He subsequently undertook postgraduate studies in that field at Leeds University, obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy in the 1950s.