Australian National University

Australian National University (ANU) proper dates to 1946, when it was founded by an act of the Australian Parliament in a suburb of Canberra, the capital of Australia.

However, in 1960 ANU merged with Canberra University College, which had been founded in 1929 under the joint auspices of the federal government and the University of Melbourne. After the merger, Canberra University College became ANU’s School of General Studies.

ANU, with a student population of nearly 21,000, is often considered the premier research university in Australia.

ANU is associated with ten Nobel laureates, namely,

• Physicists, John Cockcroft & Brian Schmidt
• Chemist, John Pople
• Pathologist, Howard Florey
• Immunologists, Rolf Zinkernagel & Peter Doherty
• Neuroscientist, John Eccles
• Economists, John Harsanyi, Edward Prescott & Oliver Williamson

Other distinguished ANU-connected individuals include the following:

• Philosophers, Jeremy Shearmur & Clive Hamilton
• Mathematicians, Bernhard Neumann, Michael Cowling, John H. Coates, Ross Garnaut & Charles E.M. Pearce
• Computer scientists, Michael McRobbie, Marcus Hutter & Andrew Tridgell
• Physicists, Mark Oliphant, Kenneth Baldwin, Ross McKenzie & Murray Batchelor
• Chemists, Arthur Birch & Denis Evans
• Neuroscientist, Rodolfo Llinás
• Virologist, Robert Webster
• Economists, John G. Crawford, Peter Drysdale, Adrian Pagan, John Quiggin & Rod Sims
• Historian, Charles Manning Hope Clark
• Political scientist, Keith Dowding
• Anthropologist, Derek Freeman
• Sinologist and essayist Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans)
• Indologist, Arthur L. Basham
• Actor, Richard Roxburgh
• Comedian and TV presenter, Hannah Gadsby
• Journalist, Christine Wallace
• TV journalist, Rosemary Church
• US public servant and diplomat, Martin Indyk
• Former New South Wales Premier, Barry O’Farrell
• Current Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk
• Australian High Court Justice, Stephen Gageler
• Former Australian Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and Bob Hawke