Olivia and her father Bryn Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022) was born in Cambridge to Bryn Newton-John (1914–92) and Irene Born (1914–2003). Born in middle-class Wales, Bryn became an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park that took Rudolf Hess into custody in WW2. After the war, he became principal of the Cambridgeshire Boys High School and was in this post when Olivia was born. Her mother was born in Germany and moved to Britain with her family in 1933 to escape Nazism.
Olivia was the youngest of three children, after brother Dr Hugh (1939–2019) and her sister actress Rona (1941–2013) who married restaurateur Brian Goldsmith. In early 1954 when Olivia was 5, her family emigrated to Australia. Her father worked as a Professor of German and the master of Ormond College at prestigious University of Melbourne. Olivia studied at Christ Church Grammar School South Yarra, and then prestigious University High School Parkville.
She initially performed in clubs and TV shows, and reached stardom after her Grammy Award-winning hits I Honestly Love You and Physical, huge successes. In 1974, she released her next album Long Live Love and made the US Billboard Hot 100. She continued to release successful albums throughout the 1970s and 80s, and won her 4th Grammy Award for her video collection Olivia Physical. In total, Olivia released 30 albums in her career and sold c100 million records worldwide.
She played the lead role in the 1978 romantic musical film Grease, the film’s soundtrack being one of the most successful ever. Directed by Randal Kleiser, the film was a huge success critically and commercially (earning $395 million on a $6 million budget). The soundtrack earned an Oscar nomination, and other awards.
She initially performed in clubs and TV shows, and reached stardom after her Grammy Award-winning hits I Honestly Love You and Physical, huge successes. In 1974, she released her next album Long Live Love and made the US Billboard Hot 100. She continued to release successful albums throughout the 1970s and 80s, and won her 4th Grammy Award for her video collection Olivia Physical. In total, Olivia released 30 albums in her career and sold c100 million records worldwide.
She played the lead role in the 1978 romantic musical film Grease, the film’s soundtrack being one of the most successful ever. Directed by Randal Kleiser, the film was a huge success critically and commercially (earning $395 million on a $6 million budget). The soundtrack earned an Oscar nomination, and other awards.
Grease, 1978
Other films included Xanadu (1980), She’s Having a Baby (1988) and It’s My Party (1996). She was last seen in the 2011 Australian-British comedy film A Few Best Men, directed by Dean Craig. She also appeared in several TV shows, including American Idol.
Olivia was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, and survived a taxing chemotherapy treatment. She was an entrepreneur and activist for environmental and animal rights issues, and also advocated for breast cancer research. After establishing the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, she recovered and was cancer-free for several years before her cancer returned in 2017. Later it painfully spread to Olivia's bones; she died in Aug 2022 at 73. RIP
How did Olivia Newton-John make such a brilliant career for herself? In my opinion, she picked her ancestors very carefully. Her maternal grandfather was German Jewish physicist Max Born (1882-1970), arguably one of the cleverest scientists of his era. He was most famous for his work on quantum mechanics, showing that the wave function could be interpreted as the probability amplitude of finding a particle at a specific point in space and a specific moment in time.
Max Born was 2nd from right in middle row.
Look for other geniuses: Wolfgang Pauli, William Lawrence Bragg, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.
Jewish born and raised, Born was officially baptised as a Lutheran in 1914, before Irene's birth. He had to escape Germany to the UK on the accession of the Nazis to power in 1933. Two years later he published The Restless Universe, an introduction to modern physics. Born became a naturalised British citizen in 1939 and a Fellow of the Royal Society that year. He was offered a professorship at the University of Edinburgh by the physicist grandson of Charles Darwin, and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954.
Maternal grandmother Hedwig was the daughter of German Jewish legal scholar Victor Ehrenberg (1851-1929), and of his Lutheran wife Helene von Jhering (1852-1920), daughter of the legal historian Rudolf von Jhering (1828–1892). After Wolfenbüttel gymnasium Victor Ehrenberg studied legal science in Göttingen, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Freiburg, then lectured at Universities of Göttingen (from 1877), Rostock and Leipzig (until 1922). Victor’s son Rudolf Ehrenberg was Prof of Physiology & Medicine at Göttingen Uni; his daughter Hedwig Ehrenberg (1891–1972) married scientist Max Born.
Victor Ehrenberg
Note Olivia’s more distant relatives who included composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)
As the Prof of Pharmacology at King's College London, and Prof at William Harvey Research Institute and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Prof Gustav Born developed a device to measure the platelet aggregation rate which revolutionised the diagnosis of platelet-related blood diseases, and helped develop antiplatelet medicines. He revolutionised cardiology and haematology, and reduced the risk of heart attack/stroke for millions worldwide. What a family!
Note Olivia’s more distant relatives who included composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)
Olivia's German-British uncle Gustav Victor Born, (1921–2018) was nother son of scientist Max Born and Hedwig Ehrenberg. Family photos showed him as a young child on Einstein's knee, and he playing for happy hours making paper airplanes from German theoretical physicist and quantum mechanics expert Werner Heisenberg's maths notes. After fleeing Germany in 1933, Gustav studied medicine at Edinburgh Uni and served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, seeing Hiroshima’s atomic bomb. He focused on the survivors’ severe bleeding disorders, the lack of platelets coming from radiation damage.
As the Prof of Pharmacology at King's College London, and Prof at William Harvey Research Institute and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Prof Gustav Born developed a device to measure the platelet aggregation rate which revolutionised the diagnosis of platelet-related blood diseases, and helped develop antiplatelet medicines. He revolutionised cardiology and haematology, and reduced the risk of heart attack/stroke for millions worldwide. What a family!