Alfred Conlon

Colonel Alfred Austin Joseph Conlon (7 October 1908 – 21 September 1961) was the head of the Australian Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) in World War II.

[1][3][4] Described as "a clever man and a brilliant talker",[3] "Svengali-like"[5] and notorious,[6] Conlon created the mysterious DORCA in part as a haven for artists and intellectuals to avoid repeating the slaughter of the best minds of a generation that had impoverished Australian culture in the First World War.

Conlon was influenced by his first philosophy teacher, John Anderson, and by James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution, a book extolling the virtues of a bureaucratic meritocracy.

In 1944, with Roy Wright, General Blamey and Howard Florey, Conlon developed the proposal for founding the John Curtin School of Medical Research.

[citation needed] He resumed his medical degree at the University of Sydney in 1950 and graduated MB, BS in 1951, "with difficulty, and despite opposition from members of the faculty".