Focken, Charles Melbourne

Charles was born in Hong Kong and migrated to Melbourne in 1908. He entered Wesley in 1914 and excelled academically, winning prizes and exhibitions at Wesley and later at University.

His Rhodes scholarship was awarded in 1923. Perhaps his most significant contribution - using his training in physics and metallurgy, has been in setting up radio carbon dating of materials, and progressive ideas on Museum management, both in Australia and internationally.

Both the Australian Dictionary of Biography and science and innovation have informative biographies on this interesting man.

From the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation:

Charles Focken was a physicist who, after 15 years at the University of Otago in New Zealand was appointed Director of the Museum (later Institute) of Applied Science in Melbourne. As Director he completed substantial building works, established a radio-carbon dating laboratory, and secured funding for a planetarium. To modernise the Museum Focken undertook a study tour of museum administration and display methods in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1953. He also appointed additional staff and increased the Museum's recurrent funding. Between 1962 and 1966 Focken was chief a of mission for a UNESCO program to establish the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology in Valetta, Malta. His publications included a biography of his postgraduate mentor, Lord Rutherford of Nelson (1937) and the textbook Dimensional methods and their applications (1953).

His two older brothers also attended Wesley, Leslie Charles (1910) was killed in action during WWI. George Frederick (1911) also served in the AIF.