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John Butt B.A, PhD., was a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Administration, Royal College of Science and Technology, from 1957 until 1964 when he became a lecturer in American Economic History at the newly formed University of Strathclyde. He was a senior lecturer from 1975 to 1976 when he was appointed Professor of Economic History. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies from 1978 to 1984. He was then appointed Vice Principle at the University of Strathclyde in 1988 and retired in the autumn of 1994.

Butt graduated with a BA from the University of London, subsequently gaining a PhD from the University of Glasgow. He joined the Royal College of Science and Technology in 1959 and was appointed to teach general studies with an inter-disciplinary team in the Department of Industrial Administration. The goal was to teach a range of courses including history, philosophy, geography and urban planning, and literature. In 1964, the College was given university status, and five new departments were created - Economics, Politics, Psychology, Administration and Economic and Industrial History. The Scottish College of Commerce merged with the university in 1964 and Butt introduced American Economic History. He was a senior lecturer from 1975 to 1976. Butt succeeded S. G. E Lythe as Professor of Economic History and in this role, he took on a new project – uncovering and writing the History of the University of Strathclyde. This involved case studies of individuals who made an important impact on the legacy of the university: John Anderson, David Livingstone, and Thomas Graham.

Butt served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies from 1978 to 1984 and Deputy Principal in 1986. On the 1st of August 1988 he was appointed Vice Principal.
He was also chairman of the governors of Craigie College, Ayr. He served on the military education committee and the general teaching council. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was a member of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

John Butt served the History Department at Strathclyde for 37 years, and under his management the History Department was granted an A excellence rating by the University Grants Committee. In autumn 1994 Butt retired from the University of Strathclyde. He died on 3 July 2002 at the age of 73.

A selection of publications by John Butt:

• 'Robert Owen, Prince of Cotton Spinners' (1971) (Co-editor)
• 'An Economic History of Scotland 1100-1939' (1975) (Co-author)
• 'A History of the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society Ltd' (1981) (Co-author)
• 'Essays in Scottish Textile History' (1987) (Co-editor)
• 'John Anderson’s Legacy. The University of Strathclyde and its Antecedents 1796-1996' (1996)

Cape Industries Ltd was registered in December 1893 as Cape Asbestos Company Ltd. It was incorporated in 1957. Its name changed to 'Cape Industries Limited' in 1974. Originally a company that specialised in mining asbestos, Cape developed asbestos-free products in the 1970s and developed a scaffolding division.

John Carey, 1861-1943, was an animal and figure painter as well as an illustrator who spent most of his in Belfast. He died on 26 April 1943. His brother Joseph W. Carey was also an artist and illustrator.

Dallas Carter entered the University of Strathclyde as a mature student in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 1999. She fitted her full-time studies around working for the charity, Sense Scotland, until the end of her third year at Strathclyde, when she gave up her job to focus on her Honours programme. She was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree with joint Honours in Politics and Scottish Studies on 5 November 2003. She subsequently volunteered with, and went on to be employed by, Citizen's Advice Scotland as a debt adviser. She also served on the Committee of the Lanarkshire Family History Society, from which she stood down in 2019.

An independent, international academy founded in 1982 with the mission to advance knowledge of occupational and environmental health, prevent disease and save lives.

John Connor was born on 23 June 1940 and grew up in Cambuslang, near Glasgow, Scotland. In the autumn of 1960, he enrolled at the Scottish School of Physical Education, located at Jordanhill College of Education in Glasgow, for a three-year course to train as a teacher of physical education. This he completed successfully, gaining his Diploma in June 1963 with merit in both teaching and professional subjects. Four months later, in October 1963, he returned to Jordanhill College of Education, this time to take a one-year postgraduate course to qualify as a primary school teacher, which he completed in June 1964. During his studies, fellow students gave him the nickname 'Sean' because of his physical resemblance to the Scottish actor, Sean Connery. John's brother, Joseph Connor, also attended Jordanhill College of Education to train as a teacher of chemistry.

John Connor was a talented footballer, having played at club level in Dundee before he embarked on teacher training. In or around 1964, he went to South Africa to play for Highlands Park Football Club, a team in the fourth tier of the South African Football League. As well as being a football player, and later a coach, he was an Ultra Marathon runner, completing at least six Comrades Marathons in South Africa. He also spent the whole of his teaching career in South Africa, taking up a post as a primary school mathematics teacher at King David School in Johannesburg, where he eventually became headmaster in 2005. After retiring from teaching, he relocated to Australia, where he died in 2014.

Carolyn Ann Converse was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA on 29 July 1942, the oldest of four children of Donald R. Converse and Doris L. Blomberg Converse. Donald Converse worked for IBM, and, following the Second World War, the family moved frequently as he was relocated to offices in different American cities. In 1948, he resigned from IBM and set up his own business so that they might have a stable home life in one place. The family settled in the town of Wilton, Connecticut, where Carolyn spent the rest of her childhood. Her father died in 1957 and her mother married Walter Snipe a little over a year later, the family subsequently relocating to Maine in 1960.

Also in 1960, Carolyn began her undergraduate studies at Pembroke College, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. A scholarship covered her tuition fees and about half of her accommodation and subsistence costs, and she earned the rest through on-campus jobs and summer employment. She graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science with High Honors in Biology from Brown University in 1964 and was accepted for doctoral study in Biophysics at Harvard University, funded by a five-year studentship from the National Science Foundation. The first two years of the postgraduate programme (1964-1966) consisted of attending classes, with her PhD research commencing in session 1966-1967. Carolyn conducted her doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital, supervised by Dr Frank F. Richards and Professor Edgar Haber. In 1967, Dr Richards took up an associate professorship at Yale Medical School and Carolyn consequently moved to New Haven, Connecticut as a visiting student at Yale, while continuing to work on her Harvard PhD thesis, which she completed at the end of 1969. Her doctorate was officially granted in 1970. She continued at Yale as a postdoctoral researcher for several months while applying for a research position at the University of Oxford.

In the summer of 1970, Carolyn moved to Oxford and commenced research with Jeremy Knowles in the Organic Chemistry Department there, sponsored by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the (US-based) Arthritis Foundation. While at Oxford, she met her husband, Dr (now Professor) Alan Cooper, and they married in 1971. In 1973, Carolyn returned to Yale University with her husband, where she held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Pathology Department, working with David Papermaster in a new direction, doing research on the eye, and eye diseases. This would become her research focus for the rest of her academic career.

The difficulty of securing permanent posts for both of them in the same city in the USA prompted the couple to return to the UK in 1976, where Alan took up a lectureship in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and Carolyn held a postdoctoral fellowship there, conducting research on the eye in collaboration with Professor Foulds at the Western Infirmary for three years. During this time, the couple’s son Ben was born. In 1979, Carolyn was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, her primary role being to teach biochemistry to pharmacy students, while still carrying out research on eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1987 and retired in 2007, by which time the Department had become part of the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences (SIPBS).

After her retirement, Carolyn served as an Honorary Lecturer in SIPBS from 2007-2009. She also took a course on teaching English, volunteered as an English tutor to new immigrants for around 10 years, and pursued genealogical research, serving as Secretary of the Genealogy Club affiliated to the University of Strathclyde’s Learning in Later Life Students’ Association. Having completed several art courses through the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for Lifelong Learning, she gained a Certificate of Higher Education in Creative Arts in 2015.

Duncan Robertson Craig was born in 1927 on the island of Arran, Scotland, and educated at the local primary school in Sliddery, followed by Keil School in Dumbarton. He enrolled as a student at the Royal Technical College of Glasgow (RTC) in 1944, qualifying for the Diploma in Engineering Science in 1946 and the Associateship in Electrical Engineering in 1947. After finishing his studies, Craig travelled to Burma for National Service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. For most of his working life he was employed at IBM in Greenock, where he worked on computers and systems. He died in Greenock in 1998, aged 70.

John Cross was educated at Dalziel High School in Motherwell, Lanarkshire. Influenced by his Physical Education teacher there, he applied to the Scottish School of Physical Education and Hygiene (SSPE) at Jordanhill College of Education, and was accepted for entry in October 1945. However, in the spring of that year, while still in his fifth year at school, he was called up for war service and spent two years in the Royal Navy from 10 September 1945. Following discharge, Cross returned to commence his professional training at the SSPE on 5 January 1948, completing the course on 15 December 1949. He was officially recognised as a qualified teacher of Physical Education from 1 January 1950. Cross was also a swimmer and water polo player with the Motherwell Amateur Swimming and Water Polo Club from 1939 until around 1951, winning the British Amateur Water Polo Championship with them in the early 1950s.
In the autumn of 1951, Cross travelled on his own initiative to Fresno State College in the United States of America for a year of further study. On returning to Scotland, he taught firstly at Airdrie High School then at Caldervale High School in Airdrie, where he became Head of Physical Education and latterly Assistant Head Teacher in charge of Guidance. He married a fellow teacher, Catherine MacLeod in 1960, and the couple had two children, Morag and Alan. Cross took early retirement from teaching in 1984, aged 55, and died in 1999.

Joan Elizabeth Curran (née Strothers), born in Swansea, was a distinguished scientist who made a considerable contribution to Britain’s defence effort during the Second World War. She also worked to support mentally handicapped children, and was very active in the early years of the University of Strathclyde.

Joan worked as a research student in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where she met Samuel Curran. They married in 1940. During the Second World War, she was instrumental in ‘Operation Windows’: a device to disrupt enemy radar. Joan Curran also worked on the Manhattan project along with Sir Samuel Curran.

In 1953 Lady Curran formed the Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped, the first meetings of which were in her own home.

She was also very active in University life, supporting her husband who became the first Principal of the University of Strathclyde in 1964. She took steps to involve women socially and educationally in the institution and founded the Strathclyde Women’s Group.

Lady Joan Curran was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, recognising her work, from the University of Strathclyde in 1987.

James Parnie Dansken was born in 1876 in Partick, Glasgow. He was the son of John Dansken (1836-1905), surveyor and President of the West of Scotland Branch of the British Astronomical Society, who donated a 13-inch reflector and 4-inch refractor telescope to the Royal Technical College. James Parnie Dansken followed his father into the surveying profession, becoming a Fellow of the Faculty of Architects and Surveyors. On 6 May 1903, he was entered onto the Trades House of Glasgow Burgess Roll. James was a partner in the firm of John Dansken & Purdie, Measurers and Property Surveyors, Valuators & Assessors of Fire Losses, from which he retired in May 1933. He died in 1947, aged 70.

Richard Doll was one of the most highly celebrated epidemiologists of the 20th century, He was best known for his work on smoking and lung cancer.

John James Dower, 1825-1901, was a mapmaker, print seller, and publisher based in London. Dower was the heir to the more prominent London engraver and mapmaker John Crane Dower, 1791-1847. Dower worked with many prominent middle to late 19th century London map publishers including Weller, Cassell, Bacon, Petermann, and others. He was elected to the Royal Geographical Society in 1854.

Mary Ann McAllister Duthie (nee McDonald) was born in Jamestown, West Dunbartonshire, on 14 July 1898, to Donald McDonald and his wife, Elizabeth McLeish. She was the second of four children, with an older brother, Thomas, and two younger brothers, Peter and Donald. She was educated at Jamestown Public School and Vale of Leven Higher Grade School, where she gained the Junior Student's Certificate in 1917. Upon leaving school, she briefly took up employment in John Brown's Drawing Office in Clydebank, but this was not for her and she enrolled for the two-year 'Chapter III' course of teacher training at the Glasgow Provincial Training College, forerunner of Jordanhill College of Education. Mary qualified as a primary school teacher in 1919 and taught at College Street School in Dumbarton until 1932, when she married George Alexander Duthie, a master saddler, who had a business in High Street, Dumbarton. As women had to give up their posts on marriage, this was the end of her teaching career. Her student cohort (Section F, 1917-1919) held an annual reunion for 60 years. Miss Jean Milligan, who taught Scottish country dancing at the College, attended many of these reunions, which took place at the Ca' D' Oro restaurant in Glasgow. Mary, who had no children, died, a month short of her 99th birthday, in June 1997.