John Edward Fletcher (18 January 1940 – 1 June 1992) was a British-Australian scholar best known for his research and publications on Athanasius Kircher as well as several other Germans who had lived in and/or influenced Australia.
[1] On graduating he moved on to the University of Durham to obtain Diploma of Education and then back to the Queen Mary College on a postgraduate scholarship intending to do his doctorate under Claus Viktor Bock on the 17th-century German polymath and polyglot Athanasius Kircher.
[2] Back in Australia, John Fletcher worked particularly hard on books that threw light on all sorts of Australian-German contacts, especially of the 19th century.
Amongst other things this led him to take part in the setting up of the Christopher Brennan Society, a literary society devoted to researching and publishing on the life and times of that brilliant but tragic figure in this university's history who had studied in Berlin around 1890, was famed as a poet in his own rights and who, as Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, lectured on several ancient, medieval and modern languages and literatures until he was sacked by the Australian Senate for adultery and/or drunkenness in 1925.
[4] Soon after his arrival in Sydney, John Fletcher joined the Friends of the University Library and as a committee member, its treasurer, secretary and, at the time of his death, president.