Harry Redner was Reader at Monash University. He also held endowed chairs at Darmstadt and Kassel Universities in Germany and visiting professorships at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, Haifa University and the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He was the author of 18 books ranging across the natural and social sciences and the humanities, notably Beyond Civilization: Society, Culture and the Individual in the Age of Globalization, Quintessence of Dust: The Science of Matter and the Philosophy of Mind and Politics, Ethics and Culture in our Time: A Post-civilizational Perspective.