Man of many talents and pursuits - The Age

John Yencken.

ARTHUR JOHN RUSSELL YENCKEN OAM

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT, INDUSTRIAL CHEMIST, GRAZIER

11-3-1926 — 14-12-2012

JOHN Yencken, who has died in Melbourne, aged 86, had a diversity of talents - linguistic, scientific, practical, diplomatic - and diverse, too, were the strands of his early life, education, and chosen paths. The terms ''polymath'' and ''Renaissance man'' describe him.

His father, Arthur Ferdinand Yencken, was an Australian diplomat serving in the British Foreign Office. Postings in America, Germany, Egypt, and Italy were followed by his appointment in 1939 to Madrid where he worked to help preserve Spanish wartime neutrality. He was killed in an air accident in May 1944. John at the time was midway through examinations in the natural sciences tripos at Cambridge. Although offered a pass without writing further papers, he elected to do them - and gained first-class honours. He was just 18, and he loved and revered his father.

His mother, Joyce, was a daughter of George Russell, a Victorian grazier, and with her sister grew up on his sheep station, Langi Willi, near Skipton. Joyce, after a period of desolation on Arthur's death, married in 1948 Sir Denys Pilditch, wartime director of counter-espionage in India. She lived with him in England until her death in 1975, though she returned frequently to Australia where her children lived: John, Elizabeth, and David. Coming from a family of linguists, John became proficient in four European languages.

John was sent from Egypt to England to board at Summer Fields, a preparatory school near Oxford from which, in 1938, he won a scholarship to Eton College. As the war lengthened, his parents decided to evacuate the children. From July 1940 to March 1943 John and David boarded at Geelong Grammar where, in 1941, aged 15, John won first place in Greek and fourth in Latin at the Victorian matriculation. He enjoyed the teaching of Kay Masterman in classics and the historian Manning Clark - both later to hold chairs in Canberra. He became a house prefect, and the headmaster, James Darling, was about to appoint him a school prefect when he learnt that the boys were soon to return to Spain and then England.

From 1943 to 1945 he read chemistry in an accelerated wartime course at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He confessed some drift in the year after his father's death, but he finished with a good second - a BA (Cantab) at just 19 (in due course MA). A debate between the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein had particularly inspired him.

Two years followed as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, specialising in radar and adult education. Back in Australia, he followed the advice of his father's best man, Richard Casey, to explore north Queensland. Then, for almost 10 years, he worked as a research chemist and administrator with Imperial Chemical Industries. At 25 he led and developed a new explosives research group at Deer Park for commercial purposes, and later led the process research section in ICI central research.

From 1957 to 1966 he was executive director of the glass division of EL Yencken & Company, an importing and merchandising firm founded by his grandfather, helping build the company's success in a rapidly developing industry. From 1966 to 1976 he directed P-E Consulting Group's Australian management-consulting subsidiary, with responsibilities also in New Zealand and south-east Asia. From 1976 to 1985, with W.D. Scott & Co, he held a wide range of industrial and commercial consultancies. Earlier, he had been active in the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party, becoming vice-president at 29.

During a period working for ICI in Britain he met Agnes-Mary Martin, a Scot, whom he married at Troon in Ayrshire in July 1951. Five sons followed - Arthur, Peter, Michael, Nicholas and Jonathan - who all survive him, as do six grandchildren. John and Agnes-Mary loved riding, and on the day she died, in 1983, from a severe asthma attack, he went for a long ride, alone - and then never rode again. In 1987 he married Fairlie Mountford, who also survives him. They shared a passion for art, and he enjoyed taking her to Spain, a country whose spell never left him. His parents were buried together in Madrid, and he loved the Prado (to him the greatest of all galleries) and bullfighting.

From 1966 to 1983 John served on the council of the Australian National University. He was foundation chairman of Anutech, a university-owned company managing a wide range of services including technology marketing, patents and consultancies. He advised the university on many matters arising from its research activities. The campus now has its John Yencken building.

He was principal consultant with Coopers & Lybrand in Melbourne from 1985 to 1987, and then principal of Karingal Agricultural and Marketing Services and Karingal Consultants. He had a rare ability to build and co-ordinate multidisciplinary teams for complex consulting work. His scope was broad and included company executive strategy reviews, studies for the beef industry, a major study of the native-flower industry, and reviews of government-established research centres.

The land remained a great love. He bought a small property at Red Hill, and to make it pay took up chicken farming. Becoming interested in cattle breeding and the new artificial-insemination techniques used to introduce new bloodlines, he helped pioneer the introduction to Australia of French cattle, both Charolais and Limousin, and became vice-president of the world Limousin Society. As a trustee of the estate of his grandfather George Russell, he helped develop at Langi Willi one of the top merino wool-producing properties in Victoria. As one of a racing syndicate that owned Gurner's Lane, he had the pleasure of seeing it win both the Caulfield and the Melbourne cups.

In his 70s as a research fellow in the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University of Technology, he earned a doctorate of philosophy at 79 for a thesis titled An Australian model for spin-off companies in the commercialisation of University and other Public Sector research. One fruit of this was an invited paper that he gave at an international entrepreneurship conference in Madrid in 2008. In 2010 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to science, particularly in the research and development fields, and to agri-business.

At a party to celebrate John's life, relatives and friends recalled his complex and admirable character, personality, integrity and achievements. He helped people to realise their potential, and worthy enterprises to evolve. He preferred influence to power, and was a true son of his father in his characteristic diplomacy.

Michael Collins Persse is curator and former head of history at Geelong Grammar School.