Geoffrey Blainey

Geoffrey Blainey
AC, FAHA, FASSA,
Born
Geoffrey Norman Blainey

(1930-03-11) 11 March 1930 (age 94)
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
SpouseAnn Blainey (present)
AwardsSir Ernest Scott Prize (1955)
Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (1964)
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (1967)
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1969)
Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1970)
Captain Cook Bicentenary Literary Award (1970)
Officer of the Order of Australia (1975)
Britannica Award for Disseminating Knowledge (1988)
Honorary Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (1988)
Australian National Living Treasure (1997)
Companion of the Order of Australia (2000)
Mining Hall of Fame (2009)
Tucker Medal (2013)
Prime Minister's Literary Awards for History (2016)
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Melbourne
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Melbourne
Notable studentsJanet McCalman
Stuart Macintyre
Frank Bongiorno
Main interestsAustralian history
World history
Notable worksThe Peaks of Lyell (1954)
The Tyranny of Distance (1966)
The Causes of War (1972)
A Short History of the World (2000)

Geoffrey Norman Blainey, AC, FAHA, FASSA (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator.

Blainey is noted for his authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including The Tyranny of Distance.[1] He has published over 40 books, including wide-ranging histories of the world and of Christianity. He has often appeared in newspapers and on television.[2][3][4]

Blainey held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne for over 20 years.[2] In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University,[3] and received the 1988 Britannica Award for 'exceptional excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of mankind', the first historian to receive that award[5] and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2000.[6]

Blainey was once described by Graeme Davison as the "most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia's living historians".[7] He has been chairman or member of the Australia Council, the University of Ballarat, the Australia-China Council, the Commonwealth Literary Fund and the Australian War Memorial.[2] He chaired the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.[2]

Blainey has appeared in lists of the most influential Australians, past or present.[8][9][10] The National Trust lists Blainey as one of Australia's "Living Treasures".[11] He served on the boards of philanthropic bodies, including the Ian Potter Foundation (1991–2014) and the Deafness Foundation Trust since 1993, and is patron of others.[citation needed]

Biographer Geoffrey Bolton in 1999 argues that he has played multiple roles as an Australian historian:

He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a pioneer in the neglected field of Australian business history ... He produced during the 1960s and 1970s a number of surveys of Australian history in which explanation was organized around the exploration of the impact of the single factor (distance, mining, pre-settlement Aboriginal society) ... Blainey next turned to the rhythms of global history in the industrial period.... Because of his authority as a historian, he was increasingly in demand as a commentator on Australian public affairs.[12]

In 2006, the Melbourne historian John Hirst made his assessment: "Geoffrey Blainey, the most prolific and popular of our historians".[13] Alan Atkinson, author of a three-volume history of Australia, called Blainey "our most eminent living historian" in a long review that mixes criticism with praise.[14]

  1. ^ "Geoffrey Blainey". Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 7 March 2021. Archived from the original on 28 September 2018. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "Professor Geoffrey Blainey". BBC Entertainment. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  3. ^ a b "Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC". Australian of the Year Honour roll. Archived from the original on 6 February 2022. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  4. ^ "A Short History of Christianity – Geoffrey Blainey (Penguin Group)". Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2012 shortlists. Australian Office for the Arts. Archived from the original on 26 April 2013.
  5. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica,"Book of the Year, 1988", Chicago, p. 15
  6. ^ "Award Citation". Prime Minister and Cabinet – Australian Honours Search Facility. 2000. Archived from the original on 29 January 2019. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
  7. ^ Davison, Graeme (2003). "Blainey, Geoffrey Norman (1930–)". The Oxford Companion to Australian History. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 9780191735165. Archived from the original on 17 July 2021. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  8. ^ "The most influential Australians". Sydney Morning Herald. 22 January 2001. Archived from the original on 6 November 2020. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  9. ^ The Bulletin, Sydney, 26 June 2006 "The Bulletin's top 100 – Reprint". Sydney Morning Herald. 27 June 2006. Archived from the original on 10 December 2018.
  10. ^ "Australia's 100 Living National Treasures", National Trust of NSW, 1997, 2004, 2012 "Geoffrey Blainey". AustLit. 10 January 2017. Archived from the original on 24 January 2021. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  11. ^ "Our Living Treasures" Archived 14 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, The Age, 18 November 2003.
  12. ^ Bolton, Geoffrey. "Geoffrey Blainey" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 1 (1999) pp. 93–95. ISBN 9781884964336
  13. ^ Hirst, John (2010). "Where Best to Look? The First XI Books". Looking for Australia: Historical Essays. Black Inc. pp. 7–8, 57, 136. ISBN 9781863954860.
  14. ^ Atkinson, Alan (18 April 2015). "Triumph of Unity". Review. The Australian. Archived from the original on 17 July 2021. Retrieved 13 September 2020.