John Rose (chemist)

Last updated April 12, 2019

John Donald Rose FRS (2 January 1911 – 14 October 1976) was a British industrial chemist, who worked for Imperial Chemical Industries from 1935 to 1972. His posts at ICI included director of research and chairman of the paints division. He was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Salters.

Fellowship of the Royal Society is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of London judges to have made a 'substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'.

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company and was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at Millbank in London, and it was a constituent of the FT 30 and later the FTSE 100 indices.

The Worshipful Company of Salters is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London, 9th in order of precedence. The Company originated as the Guild of Corpus Christi, which was granted a Royal Charter of incorporation in 1394. Further Charters granted the Company the authority to set standards and regulations regarding the products of its members.

Life and career

Rose was born in Greasbrough, Rotherham, Yorkshire on 2 January 1911 and was educated at Rotherham Grammar School before matriculating at Jesus College, Oxford in 1929 to study chemistry. He graduated with a BA degree in 1932, and spent a further year in study with Robert Robinson to obtain a post-graduate BSc degree in 1933. A two-year fellowship awarded by the Salters' Company allowed him to continue his research with Robinson in Oxford and to spend a year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich with Leopold Ružička on the structure of abietic acid. In 1935, Rose started work as a research chemist for Imperial Chemical Industries in Blackley, Manchester, where his work included evaluating a new polymer called nylon. During the Second World War, Rose was part of a research group considering the possibilities for new business after the war, although plans to use acetylene as an intermediary for making organic chemicals were not pursued when it became clear that it was uneconomic to do so.^[1]

Greasbrough is a small suburb in Rotherham, in South Yorkshire, England. The suburb falls in the Wingfield Ward of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. Greasbrough had its own local council, Greasbrough UDC, until its absorption into the County Borough of Rotherham in 1936.

Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England, which together with its conurbation and outlying settlements to the north, south and south-east forms the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, with a recorded population of 257,280 in the 2011 census. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, its central area is on the banks of the River Don below its confluence with the Rother on the traditional road between Sheffield and Doncaster. Rotherham was well known as a coal mining town as well as a major contributor to the steel industry.

Yorkshire Historic county of Northern England

Yorkshire, formally known as the County of York, is a historic county of Northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Due to its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform. Throughout these changes, Yorkshire has continued to be recognised as a geographical territory and cultural region. The name is familiar and well understood across the United Kingdom and is in common use in the media and the military, and also features in the titles of current areas of civil administration such as North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.

In 1949, Rose became associate research manager, and then director of research in 1951; the company's work in this period included research into Procion dyes and Terylene (an artificial fibre). In 1958, he became production director, followed in 1959 by the post of joint managing director (and later chairman) of the paints division. His final appointment within ICI was as research and development director in 1966 (although he spent a period in 1968 to 1969 as chairman of Ilford Photo, which had been acquired jointly by ICI and the Swiss company Ciba). He retired in 1972. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1971 and vice-president of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1968. After his retirement from ICI, he was a director of Laporte Industries and chairman of the Fulmer Research Institute. He was a governor of the University of Salford (and was awarded an honorary DSc in 1972) and Master of the Salters' Company in 1973. He died on 14 October 1976 at his home in Chalfont St Peter.^[1]

Procion is a brand of fibre reactive dyes. They are commonly used in tie dye and other textile crafts. They are dichlorotriazine dyes and were originally made by Imperial Chemical Industries. The brand name is now owned by Dystar, but, since the patent on the dyes has expired, many manufacturers around the world now make them.

Ilford Photo is a UK manufacturer of photographic materials known worldwide for its black-and-white film and papers and chemicals, as previously as its range of Ilfochrome and Ilfocolor colour printing materials, before these were discontinued. Ilfochrome was formerly called Cibachrome, developed in partnership with the Swiss company CIBA-Geigy. Formerly, it published the Ilford Manual of Photography, a comprehensive manual of everything photographic, including the optics, physics and chemistry of photography, along with recipes for many developers.

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References

1 2 Williams, Trevor I. (2004). "Rose, John Donald (1911–1976)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition, subscription access). Retrieved 2009-01-20.

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[Oxford-1] 1 2 Williams, Trevor I. (2004). "Rose, John Donald (1911–1976)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition, subscription access). Retrieved 2009-01-20.