James Robert Price 1912–1999

CSIRO PUBLISHING www.publish.csiro.au/journals/hras Historical Records of Australian Science, 2004, 15, 95–120 James Robert Price 1912–1999 David J. Collins1, Gregory W. Simpson2, David H. Solomon3 and Thomas H. Spurling4 1Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Chemistry, Monash University; Senior Fellow, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Vic. 3052, Australia. 2Deputy Chief, CSIRO Molecular Science, Bag 10 MDC, Clayton South, Vic. 3169, Australia. Corresponding author; email: [email protected] 3Professorial Fellow, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Melbourne, Vic. 3052, Australia. 4Director, Industrial Research Institute Swinburne, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Vic. 3122, Australia. James Robert Price (who early in life an unfortunate accident. He spent the last became known as Jerry Price) was one of years of his life, supported by Joyce, in a Australia’s leading chemists. After a distin- local nursing home where he died on guished career at the University of 8 March 1999. Adelaide and at Oxford University, where he worked with Professor Sir Robert Family Background and Early Robinson, he returned to Australia follow- Education ing the Second World War with wife Joyce James Robert Price was born on 25 March to join the then CSIR. He was to parti- 1912 at Kadina, a small town at the top of cipate in a project initiated by the Division the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. He of Plant Industry, a search for medicinal was the eldest of three children reared by drugs in the Australian flora, providing Edgar James Price (1875–1937) and Mary expertise in chemical studies; in time, he Katherine Price (née Hughes, 1883–1937); developed the project into the extra- the other children were John (b. 1915) and ordinarily productive and co-operative Mary (b. 1917). Australian Phytochemical Survey. He James Robert’s paternal grandfather, became Chief of the CSIRO Division of Benjamin James Price, after spending his Organic Chemistry, then a member and early years in Kidderminster, England, eventually Chairman of the CSIRO Execu- migrated to Australia in 1857, lured not by tive. In these roles he displayed great the gold rush but by other opportunities organizational and leadership skills. These offered by the new colony of South Aus- were particularly needed during his time as tralia. At the time of his marriage to Ellen Chairman when major changes in the Mary Carruthers in 1865, Benjamin Price structure of CSIRO were proposed by the was a Commission Agent in Adelaide; government of the day. He was able to some time later they moved to Kapunda, a preserve the structural integrity and copper mining town, where their son Edgar scientific focus of CSIRO during that James Price was born in 1875. period. He made major contributions to the James Robert’s paternal grandmother, discipline of chemistry in Australia partic- Ellen Mary Carruthers, was descended ularly through his leadership and redirec- from a Scottish family that lived on the tion of the Royal Australian Chemical coast of Solway Firth, south of Annan in Institute and his belief in the need for the shire of Dumfries. Some time in the active interaction between Australian 1840s Ellen’s father John Carruthers research institutes. He enjoyed an active (1806–1887) migrated to South Australia retirement before suffering the effects of where he established himself as a wine © Australian Academy of Science 200410.1071/HR03012 0727-3061/04/010095 96 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 15 Number 1 Figure 1. Sir Robert Price. Picture taken in 1975. James Robert Price 1912–1999 97 merchant in Adelaide. The Carruthers choice, in due course, to be known as ‘Sir family connection is doubly strong Robert’ rather than ‘Sir James’ — the because James Robert Price’s maternal name ‘Jerry’ came to be used generally grandfather, Henry Chauntrell Hughes, and, to all those on first name terms, he married Mary Catherine Carruthers, a was ‘Jerry’ for the rest of his life. cousin of Ellen Mary Carruthers.1 Upon completion of his Leaving At the time of his marriage to Mary Honours year at St Peter’s College in 1928, Hughes, Edgar Price was employed by the Jerry wanted to enrol in the Faculty of Savings Bank of South Australia in Science at the University of Adelaide. In a Adelaide; soon after that he was appointed letter dated 12 November 1984 to Dr as the first manager of the new Branch of Rupert Best, who was collecting informa- that institution at Mount Gambier, and tion for his book on the history of the subsequently as manager of the Branch at Chemistry Department of the University,3 Kadina, where his son James Robert Price Jerry recalled the circumstances of his was born. About two years later the Bank entry into the University of Adelaide and moved Edgar Price back to the manager- the nature of his work there, both as an ship at Mount Gambier, but when they undergraduate and as a graduate student. asked him to move again, he decided to Most of the following facts about Jerry’s resign in order to establish his own work, study and research at the University accounting business; this was originally a of Adelaide have been extracted from that partnership but he later operated on his letter. own. Mount Gambier remained the family’s home town and it was here that at University of Adelaide the age of about six James Robert Price Jerry had looked forward to undertaking a began his education, first at a small Church university course in science in the usual of England school run by a Miss Warren, way. However, because of the deepening and then at Umpherston College, a Pres- economic depression, Edgar Price could byterian school in Mount Gambier; not finance his son’s enrolment and the Umpherston College was essentially a added expense of his boarding away from girls’ school, but included a minority of home. Hence, at his father’s urging, Jerry boys. In 1923 James Robert was awarded a applied for a cadetship in the Chemistry Vansittart scholarship to St Peter’s College, Department of the University. He was an élite boys’ school in Adelaide. For the interviewed by Professor A.K. Macbeth4 first two years he was a boarder in the who appointed him as a cadet at the begin- preparatory part of that school. He then ning of 1929, initially on a wage of 10/- spent four years in the Senior School per week and later 25/- per week. This where he was originally a boarder, but position gave him the right to enrol in such when the economic depression hit Aus- courses as Macbeth approved, without tralia in the late 1920s Edgar Price was payment of fees. Because of their work- unable to afford the fees, and for the last load, cadets took four years rather than the year or so of his secondary education usual three to complete a BSc degree. James Robert lived with his mother’s aunt Jerry’s duties as a cadet included the Mrs Edith Helen Turner (née Carruthers) preparation of solutions required for quali- who was ‘very helpful to me but some- tative and quantitative chemical analyses thing of a dictator’.2 in the first-year practical classes, but he It was at St Peter’s College that Price also had some contact with third-year was given the nickname ‘Jerry’ but he students doing analytical work under Dr remained ‘Bob’ to his family — hence his W.T. Cooke.5 In 1931 Macbeth transferred 98 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 15 Number 1 him to the job of Lecture Demonstrator, quinone derivatives, but their structures which entailed preparing and carrying out remained unknown.7 Here was a challenge, the experiments demonstrated by the Pro- and one of the first projects that Macbeth fessor in lectures to the first-year students. gave to Jerry as an Honours student was to This meant that he was now located in the measure the ultraviolet absorption spectra Prince of Wales Building where he came of a number of known hydroxynaphtha- into more contact with third-year and quinones for comparison with the spectra Honours (fourth-year) students. For an of the Drosera pigments (4).8 This enabled enthusiastic undergraduate, this regular deduction of the structures of these pig- contact with research students must have ments that Macbeth named droserone and been both enlightening and stimulating. Hydroxydroserone.9 The structure of the One of the people he met in this new latter was firmly established by synthesis environment was Gordon Kingsley (Bill) by Winzor,10 a junior and previously Hughes who, after completing his BSc unproductive member of the staff whom degree in 1929, had become a Demon- Macbeth had stimulated into action. strator in the Chemistry Department, and Macbeth was further drawn into natural who in 1934 was appointed as Assistant products chemistry by the fact that Lecturer in the Chemistry Department of P.A. Berry and T.B. Swanson, two full-time the University of Sydney. They became employees of the manufacturing company life-long friends, and their close friendship A.M. Bickford and Sons,11 came to the was to have particular significance in what Chemistry Department as evening MSc became the Australian Phytochemical students with the desire to work on compo- Survey. nents of the essential oil of Eucalyptus In 1933 Jerry began his research career cneorifolia, a product of commercial inter- as an Honours student under Macbeth’s est to Bickfords. In a reflection on ‘scien- supervision. In his letter to Best, he tific pedigree’ in his letter to Best, Jerry describes in some detail the research inter- recalled: ‘I have little doubt that Macbeth’s ests of Macbeth in the 1930s, and his own preparedness to move into that field as involvement as a research student.

Load more