E.
J. Hartung succeeded fellow Wesley Collegian David Rivett as Professor
of Chemistry from 1928 to 1953 and during the first years of his term
was heavily involved in the design and construction of a new building
for the Chemistry School. He served three times as General President
of the (Royal) Australian Chemical Institute and represented Australia
in 1931 at the centenary meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Professor Hartung lived with his family on campus in what is now University
House. Having worked on the design of gas masks with Masson and Laby
during the First World War, Hartung made a notable contribution during
the Second as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Optical Munitions
and produced trial batches of optical glass, for use in optical munitions,
using local raw materials for the crucibles and melts.
Large-scale production, based on Hartung's work, was undertaken by
Australian Consolidated Industries. British experts had estimated that
this would take four years and cost a million pounds, but the Australian
team achieved their results in 10 months at a cost of £60,000.
Photography was a lifelong interest and Hartung's record of the various
forms of Brownian movement in colloidal solution on 35mm cinefilm was
copied for its World Science Library onto 16mm film by the Eastman Kodak
Company.
When he took early retirement in 1953, Professor Hartung established
an observatory on Lavender Farm at Woodend and in 1968 published Astronomical
Objects for Southern Telescopes: A Handbook for Amateur Observers, based
on his study of some 4000 stellar objects.
The 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires which destroyed Lavender Farm also
consumed Professor Hartung's diary of some 7000 pages. Part of his professional
library and other papers are held in the University of Melbourne Archives.
Image: Ernst Hartung and colleague Gustav Ampt examining samples from
experiments relating to the manufacture of optical glass c. 1940-42.
(University of Melbourne Archives)
