David Edmund Caro

David Edmund Caro (29 June 1922 – 15 August 2011) was Australian physicist who was vice-chancellor of the University of Ballarat, the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania, interim vice-chancellor of the Northern Territory University, and chancellor of the University of Ballarat. He was instrumental in creating Unisuper, the superannuation scheme of university employees. He supported Antarctic research and travelled to Antarctica twice, paying a brief visit to the South Pole.

After service in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) during the Second World War, during which he maintained radar systems, he graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1946 and a Master of Science degree in 1949. He then went to the University of Birmingham in England, where he assisted the expatriate Australian professor of physics, Mark Oliphant, in the construction of the Birmingham proton synchrotron, which formed the basis of his 1951 Doctor of Philosophy thesis. He returned to the University of Melbourne, where he became head of the physics department in 1961 and deputy vice chancellor in 1972. Caro was vice-Chancellor of the University of Tasmania from 1978 to 1982, and of the University of Melbourne from 1982 to 1987.