Dr Edward Duyker is the eldest of eight children born in Melbourne to a Dutch father and a Mauritian mother in 1955. He graduated from La Trobe University in 1977 with a BA (Hons.) and received his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne in 1981. He worked as an intelligence officer (South Asia/Middle East) with the Department of Defence in Canberra until 1983 and was briefly a Teaching Fellow at Griffith University in Brisbane. In 1984 he settled in Sydney as an independent historian. Between 1996 and 2002 he also served as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Mauritius in New South Wales.
Dr Duyker is the author of fifteen books. These include several ethno-histories -Tribal Guerrillas (1987), The Dutch in Australia (1987) and Of the Star and the Key (1988) - and numerous books dealing with early Australian exploration, including The Discovery of Tasmania and An Officer of the Blue (1994). Nature's Argonaut, his biography of Daniel Solander the Swedish naturalist on the Endeavour, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's General History Prize in 1999. With his mother Maryse Duyker he published the first English translation of Bruny d'Entrecasteaux's journal in 2001. His most recent book Citizen Labillardière (2003) is the biography of Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière, yet another one of the founders of the natural sciences in Australia. This book won the New South Wales Premier's General History Prize in 2004.
In 2000 Dr Duyker was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government. He was awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian Government in 2003 and the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2004. Dr Duyker is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of French Studies at the University of Sydney; Associate Editor of Explorations, published by the Institute for the Study of French Australian Relations; he is also a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the Royal Historical Society. He married Susan Duyker, an architectural heritage consultant (B. Sc. (Arch.), B.Arch. Syd )and has two sons: Samuel (born 1984) and Pierre (born 1986). (Biography supplied by the author)
