DOCTOR OF SCIENCE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 25, 24 October 1942, Page 8

DOCTOR OF SCIENCE

New Zealander’s Success , Overseas The degree of Doctor of Science (Oxon) has been awarded to Dr. John C. Smith, an old boy of Wellington and Victoria College and a son of Mr. 11. G. Smith, Pukerua Bay. , . .. ' , Dr. Smith went from Wellington College in 1917 to Victoria College and took the B.Sc. degree in 1919. In 1921 -he obtained the M.Sc. degree with first-class honours and also the 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship from Auckland University College, proceeding thence to Manchester in order to work at organic chemical research under Professor Robert Robinson. The long vacations he spent in the laboratory of Professor Fritz Pregl at Graz, in Austria, and brought to England the elegant methods of micro-analy-sis for the development of which Pregl had been awarded the Nobel Prize. After having taken the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1925, Dr. Smith joined the staff of Manchester University; during 1927 and 1928 he was in Canada (at McGill University) working oh problems of the cellulose .industry. In .1928 he returned to England to a-Lectureship at Oxford in Professor Soddy’s department inorganic chemistry) and.while there he collaborated also with Professor W. IL Perkin on the chemistry of strychnine. . When Professor' (now Sir) Rupert Robinson succeeded Professor Perkin in the Chair of Organic | Chemistry, Dr. Smith was transferred to the organic department; there he has carried out most of the researches which have earned for him the D.Sc. degree. • • ’ Dr. Smith is a member of New College (Oxford), where he took the B.Se. and M.A. degrees, and is a lecturer at Jenus College. Lately he lias become chairman of the fine chemicals sub-committee of the Advisory Research Council of the Chemical Society, and is away from Oxford,