This is a very brief autobiography of the essential highlights of my professional life.

I was born in 1932 and spent my childhood in Edinburgh, including during the war years. My father was a mechanical engineer. Because of the war, the number of classes at school was compressed, meaning I was able to obtain my Scottish Senior Leaving Certificate at the ripe age of 15, allowing me to graduate from university with an electronics engineering degree a few days before my 19th birthday, which I spent in the basic training camp of  the Royal Corps of Signals, in Catterick, Yorks. From demobilisation in 1954 until November 1963, I worked for a few British companies as an engineer. At the same time, I took some post-graduate courses in various sciences. On the day President Kennedy was assassinated, my wife, daughter and I left the UK to live in Switzerland, where we stayed until I ostensibly retired in 1998, when my wife and I moved to Cyprus.

Up to 1974, my career spanned a number of sectors within the electronics industry, but it was ineluctably drawn to the use of chemistry within it, possibly because I knew more about chemistry and physics than most of my colleagues. This gave me a big advantage and I was beginning to become internationally known regarding the problems of ensuring clean electronics components and assemblies. This involved the theory of the materials used, the chemicals used, including solvents, and how they contaminated the products. In late 1974, I had a spat with my boss of the time and slammed the door of the printed circuit factory I was directing in his face.

This was when I decided to found the Protonique trade mark, with the registration of the corporation Protonique SA in 1975 in Lausanne (Protonique Ltd, in the UK, was founded later). The Protonique Group also comprised some ad hoc companies or participation in them, which were set up for specific purposes or for short periods. This group's main activity revolved round cleaning electronics components and assemblies and acting as consultants in the same field. We manufactured specialised hi-tech equipment for cleaning and contamination testing, for which we pioneered the use of computers, along with specialised chemicals for soldering and cleaning. Other company divisions had widely different activities, unrelated (or slightly related) to the mainstream business.

Aware of the paucity of scientific information on the subject, I wrote my first book, The Handbook of  Contamination, in 1981, followed by a French version. This was followed in 1986 by Cleaning and Contamination of Electronics Components and Assemblies, which had the good fortune to become the standard work. This was translated into German as Reinigen in der Elektronik. Since then I have authored and co-authored a number of other books.

I became aware of the fact that the electronics industry was causing much pollution in the 1970s, especially by the use of solvents which were starting to be suspected as causing ozone depletion. As early as 1975, I was promoting aqueous cleaning as being preferential and more economic, based on experience gained a decade earlier, when I set up the first aqueous soldering line in Switzerland for full scale production. I converted a number of companies throughout Europe to this technology and also worked with the UK Ministry of Defence from about 1980 onwards, culminating in the first military specification permitting aqueous technology for electronics in 1986.

In 1988, a few months after the nations signed the Montreal Protocol, I received a letter from Flavio Cotti, then Swiss Minister of the Interior, inviting me to join the Swiss National Commission on the Ozone Layer. This led to a mandate from Switzerland, commissioning me to represent the country on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Technical Options Committee for phasing out ozone-depleting solvents (STOC). I then chaired from 1989 to 2003 the electronics sub-committee. I was also co-chair of the UNEP Technical and Economics Assessment Panel Task Force on n-propyl bromide. In addition I accepted commissions from the UNEP Multilateral Fund Secretariat, where I was named Senior Solvents Consultant. I was also author of the STOC Assessment Report  chapters on electronics over the years and, in particular, was the author and editor of the full 2002 Report. In all, I worked for many years on this sector of environmental activities, amongst others, throughout the Northern Hemisphere and some of the south as well.

I have been honoured to receive a number of awards for my work in the protection of the ozone layer, including the Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award and "Best-of-Best" Award of the US EPA and three Citations from UNEP plus the coveted UNEP Innovator's Award (click to enlarge):

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In 2000, The Institution of Electrical Engineers, the largest learned society in Europe, of which I'm a Chartered Member, started to reorganise its rather staid image and inaugurated some proactive Professional Networks. I was democratically elected as a member of the first Executive Team of the PN called Engineering for a Sustainable Future (open to non-IEE members as well) and was a judge of the first New Spirit Challenge. The IEE has since become the IET (Institution of Engineers and Technologists).

All in all, I have given nearly 200 technical presentations, published papers, lectures in several tens of countries, both developing and developed, related directly or indirectly to the environment and sustainability.

I now live as a white-bearded retiree in a small village in the Republic of Cyprus, with my wife, where we moved in 1998, while my daughter and grandchildren have remained in Switzerland.

I ask readers to forgive the trumpet-blowing sound of this page. It is not here as a means of boasting, but a number of surfers have asked me for my credentials to pontificate on the environment.

Links

Book
UNEP Ozone Secretariat
IEE Professional Network, Engineering for a Sustainable Future

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