Harald Jensen

Who was Harald Jensen?

Harald Ingemann Jensen was a Danish-born Australian geologist and socialist.

Jensen was born at Aarhus in Jutland to farmer Niels Georg Oscar Jensen and Clara, née Nielsen, the latter of whom was purported to be a descendant of the great Danish poet Bernhard Severin Ingemann. Around 1885 the family migrated to Queensland, where young Harald attended public schools before winning a scholarship to Brisbane Boys' Grammar School. In 1898 he was employed at Clement Wragge's observatory at Mount Kosciuszko before briefly studying at the University of Sydney; he took time off from 1900 to 1901 to teach in Sydney and North Queensland before returning to his studies in 1902, receiving a Bachelor of Science specialising in geology in 1904. He was employed as an assistant demonstrator to Edgeworth David before becoming the first Macleay fellow of the Linnean Society of New South Wales in 1905, allowing him to travel extensively in the Pacific, including to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand. He married Jane Elizabeth Ellen England on 26 September 1906 in Sydney.