Norbert Abeles was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1923. Following the incorporation of Austria into Germany under the Anschluss, he fled to the United Kingdom in December 1938 where he attended a farm school for refugees. He was transferred to Glasgow in 1941, where he completed an engineering apprenticeship and enrolled at the Royal Technical College (RTC) as a full-time student in session 1947-1948, qualifying for the Diploma in Mechanical Engineering (1948). He was granted a Naturalisation Certificate by the Home Office on 2 February 1948. After working in the aircraft industry in England for two years, Abeles returned to Glasgow and took a further year of study at the RTC to qualify for its Associateship in Mechanical Engineering (1952), plus a BSc (Hons) in Engineering from the University of London (1951). He then became an Assistant Lecturer at the Constantine College in Middlesborough, England. In 1956, having joined Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, he took up the post of Head of the Mechanical Engineering Section at the Yaba Technical Institute (later renamed the Yaba College of Technology) in Lagos, Nigeria, where he was promoted to Acting Vice Principal. Abeles left Yaba in 1964 and registered with the Resettlement Bureau of the UK Ministry of Overseas Development, briefly serving as Lecturer in Charge of Mechanical Engineering at the South Australian Institute of Technology in Whyalla, Australia, from April 1965 to November 1966. He then become Head of the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering department at the Kenya Polytechnic, in Nairobi, Kenya, where he progressed to Acting Principal. In December 1968, he was transferred to the post of Principal at Mombasa Technical Institute (later renamed Mombasa Polytechnic). Abeles left Mombasa in 1972 and took up a one-year United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) appointment at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He subsequently accepted a second UNESCO post on a Teaching Aids project in Lagos, where he was charged with overseeing the maintenance of the science equipment in the Federal secondary schools throughout the Federation of Nigeria, designing new equipment and training counterparts. From 1976-1979, he was employed as a training manager for the Dunlop (Nigeria) Ltd factory near Lagos, and from 1976-1983 he worked on a partnership project between the International Labour Organization and the Ministry of Labour in Lilongwe, Malawi to encourage entrepreneurship, improve the training of technicians and craftsmen and to train counterparts. When this particular contract ended, he remained in Malawi and spent two years as a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the Malawi Polytechnic. He then worked in private industry in Lilongwe before retiring, aged 69, in 1992 and moving with his family to Nkhotakota, Lake Malawi.
Architect and town planner, born at Bowden Vale, Cheshire, 8 March 1868. After the first Town Planning Act in 1909, he became the first editor of the Town Planning Review, which promoted formal design in place of garden city vernacular. In September 1914, he became the first Professor of Town Planning at University College, London. He died 11 April 1946 in Hampshire.
Margaret B. Aitkenhead (known as Maggie) was educated at High Blantyre Public School. From there, she enrolled for a teacher training course at the Glasgow Church of Scotland Training College in July 1886, having passed the entrance examination in the Second Class. She completed her two years of training and qualified for her teaching certificate at Christmas 1888.
Dr Linda Armstrong is a retired speech and language therapist whose varied career included clinical work as well as research and teaching. She was a member of RCSLT for more than 30 years. She has a long standing collaboration with Jois Stansfield on the history of speech therapy.
Costandi (known as Costi) Audeh was born in 1932 in Nazareth, Palestine and educated at the Missionary Societies' Bishop Gobat School in Jerusalem. In 1948, he, like his father and brother before him, enrolled as a medical student at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. However, it soon became apparent that his true interest was not medicine but chemistry, and after passing the required entrance examination, he was accepted onto the four-year BSc course in Applied Chemistry at the University of Glasgow in 1951. Under an affiliation scheme between the University and the Royal Technical College (RTC), now the University of Strathclyde, students aiming for a degree in pure science or engineering could choose to take many of their required classes at the RTC. Costi did so, attending the RTC as a matriculated University student and graduating in 1955. He also took additional classes at the RTC in order to qualify for its Associateship (ARTC) in Applied Chemistry that same year. He went on to work for the British Rubber Producers' Research Association in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, but after a few years he returned to the Middle East, attracted by the prospect of a career in the oil industry. In 1958 he became a Refinery Chemist with the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), where he found another eight alumni of the University of Glasgow and the RTC amongst the employees, and where he developed expertise in the evaluation of crude oil. In 1962, Costi married Margaret Clark, a school teacher from Hull , who was also employed by KOC. Costi was subsequently transferred from KOC to Gulf Oil Corporation’s Gulf Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), and the Audehs departed for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, where Costi was responsible for producing a handbook about all aspects of Kuwait Crude Oil and its derivative products. In 1966, he secured educational leave of absence to allow himself, Margaret and their two young sons to return to the United Kingdom, where he had been accepted onto the D.Phil. research programme in Physical Organic Chemistry at the University of York. Costi graduated in October 1970, and in 1971 took up a position in the Technology Department of the Mobil Research and Development Corporation (MRDC). There he developed generalised algorithms to predict the properties of various commercially obtained refinery products based on the properties of small distillate fractions obtained from crude oil by distillation in the laboratory. The algorithms were then converted to computer programs, known as ‘ASA Programs’. In 1974 he transferred from the Technology Department to the Central Research Division, later renamed the Central Research Laboratory (CRL) of MRDC, where he studied the chemistry and oxidative stability of petroleum based lubricating oil. Within the CRL, collaboration and the exchange of idea between researchers and staff from different departments was both facilitated and encouraged, and Costi benefitted from this, collaborating with various staff members from different areas of the MRDC to produce proposed solutions. Mobil saw sufficient potential in these proposed solutions to make them the subjects of numerous national and international patent applications, lodged before Costi's retirement from the corporation in 1993.
Joe Beltrami was born on 15 May 1932 in Rutherglen, Lanarkshire. He was educated at St Aloycious' College in Glasgow, then studied law at the University of Glasgow and completed a legal apprenticeship with the local firm of Baird Smith Barclay and Muirhead. He set up his own legal firm, Beltrami & Company, in Glasgow in 1958. Willie Dunn joined him as a partner shortly afterwards and the business soon established a large clientele. Beltrami specialised in criminal law and first came to public prominence when he successfully defended Walter Scott Ellis, who was accused of murder in 1961. In a similarly high-profile case, Beltrami defended Patrick Meehan, who was accused and wrongfully convicted of murder in 1969. After a 15-year battle, which also involved a campaign by the television commentator, Ludovic Kennedy, Beltrami and Nicholas Fairbairn succeeded in having Meehan's conviction quashed. Meehan was granted a Royal Pardon and received a large compensation payment and Beltrami subsequently published a book about the case, entitled 'A Deadly Innocence'. Beltrami was also known for representing Arthur Thompson, the self-styled Glasgow gangster, for over four decades. In 1993 he became the first Solicitor-Advocate to plead in the Court of Criminal Appeal. He died in Glasgow on 24 February 2015.
Elaine Blaxter initially worked as a librarian in the industrial sector before joining the University of Strathclyde in 1993 as the Business Faculty Librarian. She was promoted to Head of Information Management in 2010, and to the role of University Librarian and Head of Library Services in 2017.
James Stirling Boyd was born on 9 September 1874 in the parish of Newbattle, Edinburgh to Thomas Boyd, a joiner, and his wife Jane (nee Stirling). James initially entered his father's trade, but had higher ambitions. As a 21-year-old apprentice joiner, he enrolled at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (GWSTC), where he pursued evening studies from session 1895-1896 to session 1899-1900. Having taken classes in Building Construction, Architecture, and Architectural Drawing, supplemented by a summer course in Mathematics in session 1902-1903, Boyd gained the GWSTC Course Certificate in Architecture and the GWSTC Course Certificate in Building Construction in 1904.
On 4 August 1899, while still an evening student, Boyd married Catherine Jane Grant, a dressmaker, in Paisley. By this time, he had completed his apprenticeship and was working as a journeyman joiner in Paisley. The couple went on to have two daughters, Catherine, born in 1900, and Jane, born in 1904.
Shortly after his marriage, Boyd became an Assistant Lecturer in Building Construction at Paisley Technical College. On 7 June 1901, he was appointed as Assistant (later Lecturer and Chief Assistant) to Charles Gourlay, Professor of Architecture and Building Construction at the GWSTC. There, Boyd's responsibilities included lecturing on courses in Carpentry and Joinery, Masonry, Brickwork and Building Construction, History of Architecture, Constructive and Historical Design, and Architectural Descriptive Geometry, as well as delivering special courses of lectures on Stereotomy.
Whilst employed at the GWSTC, Boyd spent his summers measuring and sketching the architectural features of various churches in Scotland and England. In 1909, he also spent eight weeks studying and photographing Renaissance architecture in London, at Hampton Court, in Paris and at Versailles. In 1910, he was elected as a Licentiate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (LRIBA), with Gourlay acting as one of his proposers.
During World War I, Boyd served as an Inspector for the Admiralty. In September 1917, the Chairman’s Committee of the Royal Technical College (RTC, formerly known as the GWSTC) considered his position, noting that ‘Mr. Boyd is acting as an Inspector under the Admiralty, and his services are not available to the College except for evening work. It is recommended that payments to him for the current financial year in respect of salary shall bring his total income from the Admiralty and from the College up to £250, provided that the payments from the College shall not exceed £100.'
Boyd resigned from the RTC in September 1918 and subsequently moved to England where he practiced as an architect in Sidcup, Kent. He later lived at 5 Wallace Road, Bath, and at 84 Hill Crescent, Bexley, Kent.
Margaret Bradley was born on 29 September 1944 and brought up in Cowcaddens, Glasgow as one of a family of five children. She attended Garnethill Convent of Mercy Senior Secondary School from 1956 to 1960. After leaving school, she moved, aged 17, to the United States of America to work as a nanny, but soon returned to Glasgow, where she held a series of jobs including a clerical role in the Accounts Department at Glasgow Corporation, a post as a bank teller, and another as a cashier and bookkeeper. She also volunteered for several charities, including two that were particularly close to her heart: the Scottish Spina Bifida Association, for which she served as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer, and the Coeliac Society, for which she acted as Treasurer. One of Margaret's family members suffered from Spina Bifida, while she herself had Coeliac disease and tried to raise awareness of the condition at a time when it was relatively little known.
In the early 1970s, Margaret returned to education, taking a course in law accounting at Central College, Glasgow, which she passed in November 1971. She followed this by attending evening classes at the Glasgow High School Further Education Centre to gain the Scottish Certificate of Education (SCE) qualifications required for admission to university. In 1974, she sat and passed the SCE Ordinary Grade examination in Modern Studies, along with the SCE Higher Grade examinations in English and Geography; in 1975, she sat and passed the SCE Higher Grade examinations in Modern Studies, History and Accounting, and the SCE Ordinary Grade examination in French. In 1975, Margaret was accepted to study accountancy as a full-time, mature student at the University of Strathclyde. She graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Accountancy in 1979 and went on to a successful career in finance, ending her working life as head of finance for North Glasgow Housing Association. She married Cheng Eng Oo in 1985, but the couple divorced in 2005 and had no children.
Margaret had a lifelong love of travel, which retirement gave her the freedom to pursue. Both intrepid and resourceful, she delighted in exploring different countries all over the world. She also enjoyed ballroom dancing and had an appreciation for fine art, collecting modern abstract oil paintings, studio pottery and oriental artwork. She died, aged 78, in 2023.
T. A. Miller Brownlie was born in June 1879 and educated at Lenzie Academy and the High School of Glasgow. In session 1895-1896, aged 16, he enrolled as a part-time student at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (GWSTC). He was then living at his family home, Springbank Villa, in Lenzie and his occupation is recorded in the GWSTC student register as 'timber merchant'. Brownlie continued to study part-time at the GWSTC until session 1897-1898, when his occupation appears in the register as 'civil engineer'. He also took classes at the University of Glasgow. After completing a civil engineering apprenticeship with Messrs. Warren and Stuart of Glasgow, he remained with the firm for four years as an Assistant, working on schemes for water supply, sewerage and sewage disposal. In 1905 he left Scotland for Punjab, India, where he joined the Public Works Department and was initially engaged on water supplies projects with the Royal Engineers in the North West Frontier Province, followed by work for the Irrigation Department there. In 1910, he was appointed Municipal Engineer of Amritsar in Northern India, where he installed a sewerage and sewage disposal system and the first municipal electrification scheme in Northern India. In 1915 he became Agricultural Engineer to the Government in Punjab, and Professor of Agricultural Engineering at the Pubjab Agricultural College, Lyallpur, where he invented many improvements and innovations to tube wells and agricultural machines. In 1931, during a period of leave in Scotland at 'Pembroke', Kirn, Argyllshire, he completed a specification for improvements in the construction of winnowing or grain cleaning machines that would ensure against loss of crop due to failure of natural wind at the harvesting season. Brownlie obtained Letters Patent for this invention in Calcutta. In 1923, Brownlie was appointed Principal of the Punjab Agricultural College and Research Institute, remaining in post until his promotion to Superintending Engineer in 1931. He was a Member of the Institution of Water Engineers (MIWE) and a Member of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers (MIM&CE). He retired from professional life in 1934.
F. M. Bruce was professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde 1948 - 1972 and was a member of the ’96 group.
Toni (Antonia) Bunch was born on 13 February 1937 in Croydon, Surrey, England, to Harold and Helen Bunch (nee Wilson). Having missed out on going to university when she left school, she took an alternative route to qualify for her chosen profession. After completing correspondence courses and attending classes at Ealing Technical College, she sat and passed the Library Association’s Associateship (ALA) examination in 1960 and subsequently worked in Scotland, spending most of her career in Edinburgh, where she specialised in medical librarianship.
From 1962-1965, Toni was employed as Assistant Librarian at the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. In 1965, she was appointed as Librarian at the Scottish Health Service Centre, where she remained until 1981, establishing its library as a national resource centre for information on all aspects of healthcare management and planning. Whilst working full-time, she completed a research thesis entitled ‘Hospital and medical libraries in Scotland: an historical and sociological study’, which she successfully submitted for the Fellowship of the Library Association (FLA) in 1973 and later published as an article in Scottish Library Studies 3 (1975).
Toni went on to register as a part-time research student at the University of Strathclyde in 1974, graduating in 1976 with the degree of Master of Arts for her thesis entitled ‘Health care administration: an information sourcebook’. The thesis was published by Capital Planning Information in 1979.
From August 1981 until 1986, Toni was employed as a Lecturer in the Department of Librarianship (known from 1985 as the Department of Information Science) at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. She also enrolled as a part-time PhD student there in January 1982. The topic of her doctoral research was Scottish medical and scientific book collectors to the end of the eighteenth century, which she described as being a logical progression from the research undertaken for her FLA thesis in the early 1970s. In March 1987, however, she abandoned her doctoral studies without completing or submitting a thesis. That same year, she was appointed as Director of the newly created Scottish Science Library at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, remaining in post until her retirement at the age of 59. She latterly lived in the village of Garvald, East Lothian, and died, aged 86 on 21 March 2023.
Toni was a Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists, receiving its Jason Farradane Award in 1990; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (a new body created when the Library Association merged with the Institute of Information Scientists in 2002); a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a Council member of the Scottish Society for the History of Medicine. During her career, she served on several national and international committees concerned with librarianship and information science. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1996.