Professor Charles Manning Hope Clark  (1915 – 1991)

Born in Sydney 1915, Manning Clark won scholarships to Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne. He later attended Balliol College, Oxford, and in the early 1940s taught history at schools in England and in Australia. He was a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne and, from 1949 Professor of History at the Canberra University College and later in the School of General Studies, Australian National University.

In 1972 he became the first Professor of Australian History and had honorary doctorates awarded by the Universities of Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney.

In June 1975 Manning Clark was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, in recognition of his writing the first three volumes of A History of Australia (ultimately in  six volumes) and was named Australian of the Year in 1980. Professor Clark died in May 1991.

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