Richard Goldner (23 June 1908 – 27 September 1991) was a Romanian-born, Viennese-trained Australian violist, pedagogue and inventor. He founded Musica Viva Australia in 1945, which became the world's largest entrepreneurial chamber music organisation. The Goldner String Quartet was named in his memory. Biography Richard Goldner was born in Craiova, Romania in 1908. His father, Avram Beer Goldner, was a delicatessen owner, and his mother was Bertha (née Sachter). He grew up with an older brother, Gerard. His family moved to Vienna when he was six months old. He took up the violin at the age of four or five. After leaving school, Goldner studied architecture at Vienna Technical University from 1925, but also enrolled at the New Vienna Conservatory (1927–30), where he studied under Simon Pullman. He later received another diploma from the Academy of Music. He received instruction at master classes from Bronisław Huberman and other violinists. He played the viola in the Simon Pullman Ensemble from 1931 to 1938, and became Pullman's assistant and closest friend. (Pullman was later to die in a Nazi extermination camp.) Goldner and his wife, Marianne née Reiss, with his brother and sister-in-law, escaped the Nazi oppression of Jews in Austria and arrived in Australia on the Orama in March 1939, six months before the start of World War II. There, although designated an enemy alien he soon became involved in musical life in his new country. He founded the Monomeeth String Quartet, basing its name on an indigenous word for peace and harmony. However, because the Australian Musicians Union's restrictions on employing foreigners meant Goldner could not take up an offer of a position with an Australian Broadcasting Commission orchestra, he had to find other ways of making a living. He worked as a jeweller with Gerard. They invented a new style of zipper that was resistant to sand and would not break under war-time conditions, and which was vitally needed for use in the manufacture of parachutes. For this, he was attached to the Army Inventions Directorate and the Royal Australian Air Force. This invention made him a lot of money, and was acknowledged in the official history of Australia's war effort. In 2011, the Oscar-winning former film maker Suzanne Baker published Beethoven and the Zipper: The Astonishing Story of Musica Viva. During the war, the then Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, was personally very helpful in arranging passage for