Ken Freeman is currently Duffiel Professor of Astronomy in the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Mt Stromlo Observatory of the Australian National University in Canberra. He was born in Perth, Australia in 1940, studied mathematics and physics at the University of Western Australia, and graduated with first class honours in applied mathematics in 1962. He then went to Cambridge University for postgraduate work in theoretical astrophysics with Leon Mestel and Donald Lynden-Bell, and completed his doctorate in 1965. Following a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Texas with Gerard de Vaucouleurs, and a research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he returned to Australia in 1967 as a Queen Elizabeth Fellow at Mt Stromlo. Apart from a year in the Kapteyn Institute in Groningen in 1976 and some occasional absences overseas, he has been at Mt Stromlo ever since. He married Margaret Cook in 1963. They have four children and eight grandchildren. Outside astronomy, his main interests are family, bushwalking, birdwatching and classical music.