The AHA mourns the passing of Emeritus Professor John Rickard. Raised in Sydney in the 1930s and 1940s, he graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts in 1955 and went on to complete a Diploma in Political Science and Economics from Oxford followed by a PhD at Monash. Here, John’s career flourished with promotions to senior lecturer and reader before his penultimate appointment as Professor of Australian Studies in 1995. His landmark contributions to Australian historical and cultural studies included publications such as Class and Politics, New South Wales, Victoria and the early Commonwealth, 1890-1910 (1976), H.B. Higgins, The Rebel as Judge (1984), A Family Romance: The Deakins at Home (1996) and the partly autobiographical An Imperial Affair: Portrait of an Australian Marriage (2013). His 1988 publication Australia: A Cultural History was particularly influential for generations of Australian historians, and was republished several times, most recently in 2018. John was a purposeful editor of Australian Historical Studies, recipient of the Ernest Scott Prize and Age Book of the Year Award, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (appointed 1991), Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University (1997-1998) and Monash Visiting Fellow of Australian Studies at the University of Copenhagen (2007). As the Australian Queer Archives committee has noted, John was an openly gay man who did not shy away from discussing his homosexuality where intellectually relevant. We offer our sincere condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.