Chemists Lead Such Interesting LIves

When I came to Massey University in 1968 there wasn’t much here. Yes the Agricultural college was but as to real science such as Chemistry, there was very little. Len Blackwell, Ken Jolley and I became part of the new group of chemists at a time when the Department was really starting to expand. A new Science building was being built and quite suddenly a combined Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, sprang into existence, a department that spread out over three, floors of the new Science Towers. Because initially the Department was small and growth was fast, making changes was easy and individuals could really make a difference.
This book charts the growth, and documents the culture that grew out of this diverse group of individuals. Chemists are often thought of as being overly intense and serious but reading this book will give you a quite different perspective.
Chemists have lots of accidents, and this was at a time when safety had not become the obsession that it did in the 21st Century. You will read about a chemist running down the corridor with his back on fire and a time when a bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid was is emptied over someone’s feet and washed off without an investigation being instigated. It was a time when people still played practical jokes on each other. There were fires, lots of them, as well as three big ones which were memorable to all those who lived through them. But floods were even more common. The effects of the floods were made worse because the floors were porous, an over sight by the builders that was not corrected even when they were warned about the effect of having holes drilled between floors in a Chemistry Building.
Yes sport played a part and invariably the games revealed much about personality of the person involved. Even research topics created their own excitement and interest. For example there was the Alcohol Research Laboratory where willing participants drank alcohol, not always with predictable results. The appointment of a new staff member could be an interesting experience. One person who accepted a position at Massey, arrived with his wife before lunch and then resigned before afternoon tea. The first news of his resignation came when it was learned that their cat was no longer being sent to New Zealand. Computers were at first not welcomed by the senior Academics who thought word processing should be done by the secretaries. In the early days, there was even time to take an afternoon off to go hunting for Toheroa on Himatangi Beach, but no longer