1. Ken Myer was a member of the notable Melbourne retailing Myer family.
20 Facts About Ken Myer
1. 2.
Ken Myer was the founding chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
3.
Ken Myer was born in San Francisco, California, United States in 1921, the eldest son of Sidney Myer, who migrated to Australia from Russia in 1899, then moved to the United States to make his fortune.
4.
Sidney Ken Myer had divorced his first wife in Reno, Nevada, but this divorce was not recognised under Australian law.
5.
The family returned to Australia in 1929 and Ken Myer was educated at Geelong Grammar School, where his strengths were in music, the arts, the classics and languages.
6.
Ken Myer's father died at an early age in 1934, when Ken was 13 years of age.
7.
Ken Myer enrolled at Trinity College, the University of Melbourne, for a term in 1939 before being accepted to the University of Oxford but could not attend due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
8.
Ken Myer attended Princeton University for a year, then returned to Australia and served in the Royal Australian Navy.
9.
Ken Myer was temporarily seconded to the Royal Navy in mid-1943, and rose to the rank of lieutenant.
10.
In 1948, Ken Myer became a Director of the Ken Myer Emporium, a role he continued until 1985.
11.
Together with his siblings, Ken Myer brought the Sidney Ken Myer Music Bowl into existence in 1959.
12.
Ken Myer donated it to the people of Victoria and Australia, and it was accepted on their behalf by the then prime minister, Robert Menzies.
13.
Ken Myer championed the introduction of freeways and shopping malls to Australia, and was instrumental in setting up the Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne.
14.
Ken Myer declined, and the post went to Sir John Kerr.
15.
Ken Myer successfully fostered new research in organisations such as the Division of Plant Industry of the CSIRO and helped build the Oriental Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
16.
The annual Kenneth Myer Lecture was founded by the Friends of the National Library of Australia in 1990.
17.
The inaugural lecturer was Gough Whitlam, and later Kenneth Myer Lecturers have included H C Coombs, Dr Davis McCaughey, Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, Sir Gustav Nossal, Professor Peter C Doherty, Fred Chaney, Professor Fiona Stanley, Harry Seidler, Tim Costello, Geoffrey Robertson, Michelle Grattan, Professor Tim Flannery, Professor Ian Frazer, Kim Williams, Laura Tingle and Professor Megan Davis.
18.
In 1947, Ken Myer married Prudence Boyd and they had five children: Joanna, Michael, Philip, Martyn and Andrew.
19.
Martyn Ken Myer is a Life Governor of the Ken Myer Foundation.
20.
Joanna Baevsky is a psychologist, and she and Michael Ken Myer were producers, with Andrew Ken Myer, of the 1988 film Radiance.