Thomas Parnell was born in West Haddon, Northamptonshire, England and died in Indooroopilly in Brisbane, Australia.

He elected to move to Brisbane with friend and future wife, Hermiene Ulrich, also a lecturer at the newly established University of Queensland.

[3] He refunded his excess pay during the War, back to the University, to assist ex-servicemen planning on undertaking study.

During 1922, he took part in an expedition to Goondiwindi to witness a total solar eclipse, and test Einstein's theory of relativity in this setting.

In 1927 Parnell initiated an intriguing experiment to allow long-term observation of the behaviour of material known to have an extremely high coefficient of viscosity.

Thus began his now famous pitch drop experiment, which, against all the odds, has been carefully preserved by UQ Physics to this day.