Geoffrey Blainey

Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, philanthropist and commentator. Blainey is known for having written  texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including The Tyranny of Distance (1966).Encyclopædia Britannica Online – Geoffrey Blainey; web 22 April 2013 He has published over 35 books, including histories of the world and of Christianity. Other well known works include The Peaks of Lyell (1954) and A Short History of the World (2000).

Blainey was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in 1967. In 1975 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his works to Australian literature. He was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list of 2000 for his service to academia, research and scholarship.It's an Honour  – Companion of the Order of Australia

Biography
Blainey was born in Melbourne, Victoria. He studied at the University of Melbourne. 

Blainey has  often appeared in newspapers and on television.BBC: Professor Geoffrey Blainey ; 22 April 2013Australian of the Year Awards Honour Roll ; State Finalist Senior Australian of the Year 2010Prime Minister's Literary Awards – 2012 Shorlist He held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He received the 1988 Britannica Award for dissemination of knowledge and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2000.

He was once described as the "most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia's living historians".Essay on "Blainey" by Professor Graeme Davison, "The Oxford Companion to Australian History", Oxford Univ. Press, 1998, p. 74)

Blainey is married to author Ann Blainey. They both live in Melbourne.

More readings
 Bolton, Geoffrey. "Geoffrey Blainey" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 1 (1999) pp 93–95

References

Other websites

Works by Geoffrey Blainey 
Works about Geoffrey Blainey 
ABC Interview with audio

Category:1930 births
Category:Living people
Category:Australian historians
Category:Australian philanthropists
Category:Australian critics
Category:Australian educators
Category:Writers from Melbourne