Sir Leslie Joseph Hooker (18 August 190329 April 1976) (born Leslie Joseph Tingyou) was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n real estate agent who established the firm L. J. Hooker. Born of Chinese Australian

Chinese Australian

Chinese Australian is an Australian of Chinese heritage. In the 2006 Australian Census, 669,890 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry....

 parents in the Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 suburb of Canterbury

Canterbury, New South Wales

-Commercial area:Canterbury has a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial developments. Commercial developments are mostly situated on Canterbury Road and surrounding streets...

, his surname was originally Tingyou but he changed it to Hooker by deed poll in 1925.

After an earlier failed real estate venture, he established L. J. Hooker in the Sydney suburb of Maroubra

Maroubra, New South Wales

Maroubra is a beachside suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Maroubra is located 10 kilometres south-east of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Randwick. Maroubra is the largest suburb in the area governed...

 in 1928. After surviving the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, his business thrived and he began purchasing other real estate businesses. By the time he retired in 1969, it was one of the biggest real restate firms in the country.

In the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1973, Leslie Hooker was knighted for services to commerce. He died in April 1976, aged 72.

A biography is being written by Natalia Hooker, his granddaughter, and is due to be released late 2010 or early 2011.