Person

Hartnett, Laurence John (1898 - 1986)

Kt CBE

Born
26 May 1898
England
Died
4 April 1986
Occupation
Mechanical engineer and Business executive

Summary

Sir Laurence Hartnett was Managing Director of General Motors-Holden's Ltd Australia 1934-1947 and a director of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Pty Ltd, Melbourne 1935-1947. He was Director of Ordnance Production within the Munitions Department and presided over the first meeting of the Optical Munitions Panel. Hartnett was a guiding influence over the Panel's work. He was also involved with many external bodies including a stint as Chairman of Ferro Corporation (Australia) Pty Ltd and John Hart Pty Ltd. Hartnett completed a mechanical engineering apprenticeship with Vickers Ltd; Lt., before joining the Royal Navy Air Service and the Royal Air Force. After the war he joined General Motors and worked at many of their branches all over the world, before coming to Australia in 1934.

Details

Chronology

1917 - 1919
Career position - Served with the Royal Navy Air Service and the Royal Air Force
c. 1920 - c. 1933
Career position - Senior Executive of General Motors in India, Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Sweden, Finland, USA, UK
1934 - 1947
Career position - Managing Director of General Motors-Holden's Ltd Australia
1935 - 1947
Career position - Inaugural Director of Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Pty Ltd
1940 - 1945
Career position - Director of Ordnance Production within the Munitions Department
1942 - 1946
Career position - Chairman, Army Inventions Directorate
1945
Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) - Managing Director of General Motors Holden
1945 - 1971
Career position - Council member of the Science Museum of Victoria
1949 - 1986?
Career position - Chairman and Managing Director of Hartnett Holdings Pty Ltd
1967
Award - Knight Bachelor (Kt) - Services to industry and government
1974
Award - Public Service Star of Republic of Singapore
1983
Award - Doctor of Laws (LLD), honoris causa, University of Melbourne

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

The University of Melbourne Archives

  • Laurence John Hartnett - Records, 1934 - 1986; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

Books

  • Hartnett, Laurence, Big wheels and little wheels (Hawthorn (Vic.): Gold Star Publications, 1973), 278 pp. Details

Conference Papers

  • Scott, D. R., 'Laurence J. Hartnett and the Holden Car', in Engineering Heritage Matters: Conference Papers of the 12th National Conference on Engineering Heritage, Toowoomba, 29 September to 1 October 2003 edited by Sheridan, Norman (Barton, Australian Capital Territory: Engineers Australia, 2003), pp. 152-163., https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.339152638265643. Details

Journal Articles

  • 'Four new Honorary Fellows named [Bryan Kelman, Brian Loton, Arvi Parbo, Laurence Hartnett]', Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 56 (13) (1984), 40. Details
  • Rich, Joe, 'An Edwardian Childhood: Sir Laurence Hartnett and theSearch for Identity', Australian Historical Society, 24 (1990), 252-266. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

See also

Gavan McCarthy [P004098]

EOAS ID: biogs/P001344b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P001344b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260