Service order of the funeral of Professor Gerard Crock and two obituaries and other papers

Historical Significance: Professor Gerard Crock died on December 23 2007 at the age of 78. He was the first Professor of Ophthalmology in the University of Melbourne, and the first in Australia. The Chair was created by the University of Melbourne in 1958 as a consequence of a subscription fund organised by local ophthalmologists and to which some optometrists contributed. It was the first chair of ophthalmology in Australia and the second in the British Commonwealth, the first having been established in London one year earlier. It was named in honour of Joseph Ringland Anderson (1894-1961), a leading ophthalmologist at the Alfred hospital, who led the group that set out to establish the chair. Crock was appointed to the chair in 1963 and retired in 1986. He was supportive of optometry at a time when the relations between optometry and ophthalmology were very hostile. He hosted Barry Cole's PhD candidature and made it possible for the College to be a principal partner in the low vision clinic established in 1973 by the Association for the Blind, a move that established optometry's expertise in low vision. He worked with optometrists Don Schultz and Rod Watkins in the development of the Schultz-Crock BIO and the COMIDO. He provided resources for other optometry graduate students in the Eye and Ear Hospital. The two letters illustrate the pressure applied to Crock in his cooperation with optometrists and his willingness to resist that pressure.