Ante Graovac

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Edward Cameron Kirby – curriculum vitaeBorn in 1934, in Stamford, England, as the only child ofAnglo-Scottish-Irish parents, Edward Kirby was broughtup with a primarily Scottish sense of identity. He show-ed interest in chemistry at a very early age. Later this in-terest remained dormant, but was revived upon his re-turn to Scotland where he enrolled in the University ofSaint Andrews and got his BSc & PhD.Edward is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemis-try. He is retired but is doing unpaid work as a Memberof the Council of, and Consultant to, the Resource UseInstitute, Editor of Nutrition and Health, and Researcherin Chemical Graph Theory. His former positions includeGeneral Manager of the Resource Use Institute (ca 1977–1988), Free-lance Consultant on technological innova-tions and industrial research management (1969–1982),New Products Chemist, British Oxygen (1965–1969),Research Chemist, Laporte Industries Ltd. (1962–1965),and Albright & Wilson sponsored Post Doc., Universityof Cambridge (1961–1962).Ed’s doctorate was on azulenes, in particular theirreaction with electrophilic reagents, he synthesized anumber of new dye-salts, and reported the first simpleazulenium salt stable at room temperature. His post-doc-toral work involved the synthesis of aromatic organo-phosphorus compounds in F. G. Mann’s team at Cam-bridge. While employed in industry, he worked mainlyon the chemistry of high purity hydrogen peroxide; themanufacture of various organic peroxides and the epo-xidation of fatty-acids as stabilizers for plastics. Later heworked on tall-oil fatty acids and pitch, which are by-products of the paper industry, including work on isolat-ing beta-sitosterol from pitch, which was thought wouldhelp lower cholesterol – this was in the sixties.Edward left industry to work as a free-lance consul-tant shortly before Robert Robertson, based in Pitlochry,founded the Resource Use Institute (RUI) in 1969, andafter four years alone went into partnership with him,and joined the Institute. RUI, a limited liability companywith no shareholders (technically called 'limited byguarantee'), has always had a strong ethical base, andoperates on both a problem-solving-consultancy and aproactive-study basis in an attempt to modernize re-source based industries or create new ones based on awise use of resources. (The term 'resource' is interpretedvery widely.) Its funding comes from a mixture of con-sultancy and long-term research contracts. One of RUIobjectives is to eventually become part of the Universityof the Highlands and Islands, and very gradually, thoughwith endless bureaucratic delays, this is coming about.The group has had a wide area of expertise, since besidesEdward as a mainstream chemist, it had Robert Robert-son as mineralogist, and such people as Robert Watson-Watt (who developed RADAR), F. N. Woodward (Direc-tor of Inveresk International), M. Slesser (chemical engi-neer and systems analyst) and about twenty other activemembers with varying qualifications, including the tenthDuke of Atholl (he allowed the use of rather a nice of-fice – Blair Castle!) who gave useful advice on businessand financial matters (as he was also director of theWestminster Press). Whenever RUI encountered prob-lems outside anyone’s sphere of competence, it wouldoutsource the work as necessary. Altogether, Edwardwas involved in something like fifty projects to varyingdegrees, and what he enjoyed was their great variety. Totake a few examples at random – appraisal of NigerianKaolins (RUI published a new method for rapid measure-ment of the surface area); minerals of the Gulf States;synthesis of zeolites in Italy; agricultural and urbanwaste to crude-oil conversion (this was before the NorthCROATICA CHEMICA ACTACCACAA 78 (2) XXIII–XXIV (2005)Sea oil was discovered!); use of hard cohune nuts in Be-lize, and of alternative gums for chewing available in theAmazon basin; analysis and alternative uses of Scottishraspberries, methods for cleaning up oil spills; the designof a domestic dehumidifier for damp Scottish houses,and the possible use of Israeli technology for 'solar pond'heat collectors in Scotland. Ed’s longer term and moreabstract projects include such things as creating a modelof a country’s economy where all transactions are inphysical terms, i.e., energy, not money (largely fundedby UNESCO), which much better reflects the carryingcapacity of a country on a sustainable basis. Socioeco-nomic proposals for a system of basic income for all cit-izens and taxation only on energy, at its primary point ofentry into the economy, have been investigated. Withinthe same abstract category is the mathematical chemistryproject which Dr. Kirby set up in 1982, but as it is diffi-cult to attract funding, this has really been something ofan indulgence by other members toward him and his in-terests! There was earlier some unfunded practical workon essential oils that Edward continued throughout theseventies, at first publishing as a private individual butlater under the RUI affiliation.The output of Edward’s research includes some sixtyarticles and papers, and a couple of patents. His othertechnical interests are as follows: nutrition, and the ques-tion of what is the optimum diet for humans, and acci-dental hypothermia. Scottish hills regularly claim casu-alties among people who climb them but underestimatethe unpredictability and the occasional ferocity of Scot-tish weather. Ed has published an attempt to model andmap all the causes contributing to such deaths. The onsetof hypothermia in such conditions has an echo in mathe-matical catastrophe theory. Edward’s other interests andrecreations range from hiking and camping, occasionalsailing or canoeing, music, the relationships between sci-ence, religion and psychology to general reading, winetasting and talking with friends.Ante GraovacXXIV EDWARD CAMERON KIRBY – CURRICULUM VITAECroat. Chem. Acta 78 (2) XXIII–XXIV (2005)

EDWARD CAMERON KIRBY – curriculum vitae

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