Bristol
University 1961-64.
1964-1979 doing pharmaceutical R&D, mainly with Beecham Pharmaceuticals,
now part of Glaxo SmithKline
1979-84 went to London Rubber to help turn round that ailing company, as
Technical Director, and later Commercial Director of its Healthcare
operations. Became a consultant to the WHO Human Reproduction Programme
1984-86, founding Managing Director of Unipath Ltd, became world leader
in pregnancy testing and fertility monitoring
1986-1990, founding Managing Director of Shield Diagnostics (now AIM
Listed as Axis Shield PLC)
1991-1993, consulting for the Chinese State Pharmaceutical Administration
1994, founded two Chinese companies, one a marketing consultancy, the
other a medical device business. These are doing well with local management
2005, founded Fertility Focus Ltd with the objective of listing it on AIM
in 2008. Watch this space!
Married (1965) Liv Grov (Norwegian) and have two daughters and four
grandchildren.
Still play regular squash and run a bit.
After finishing my BA at Manchester, I was supposed to go into the Diplomatic Service, but asked for a year's delay in order to do an MA in the US -- which I did at the Univ. of Illinois. I got so fascinated that I then asked if I could take another three years to do a doctorate -- they refused, so I had to make a choice. Finishing the doctorate in 1968, I first taught Romance Languages at Yale, but found teaching French lang. and lit. a bore, and after a year of research in Paris, leapt at the chance to teach Comparative Literature at the U. of Montreal. I'd been married since 1966, and already had one son (born in Paris) -- we later had a daughter and another son, but by the last the marriage was getting rocky. We moved from Montreal to Emory U in Atlanta in hopes of keeping it together, via another research year in Oxford, but split up soon thereafter and divorced in 1986. Shortly thereafter (1987), my eldest son and I moved to New York, where I professed and department-directed at NYU, to be joined by my daughter in 1988. Meanwhile, I'd a new companion and we married also in 1988; we had been commuting between Atlanta and NY, and soon found ourselves commuting between NY and Berkeley, since Pat started professing at the U of California there. We kept an apt. in NY, but had a house in Berkeley, which is where home was, though it was complicated for me to keep books and suchlike where and when I needed them. My eldest son is now a surgeon in Los Angeles, while my daughter is teaching modern US and Latin American history at the U of Hawai'i. We have two grandchildren and a close godchild. My youngest son (now 28) continues in Atlanta, since he stayed with his mother, but we see him here in Tucson, where we now live -- for the desert, the warmth, and Mexico, where much of my research now is. Pat retired this past December (2006), and I shall do the same at the end of this coming September, though NYU has made a rather nice deal for me whereby I'll go back for four weeks every year for at least the next five, or as I want, to give seminars and lectures. I'm actually on sabbatical leave this current year, so Pat and I are finally properly together after these many years.
NOTES FROM JOHN’S C.V.
Qualified Dip. Arch (Dist) at the Birmingham School of
Architecture and won RIBA Certificate of Merit for the best student
portfolio. Won RIBA Scholarship for production drawings and in 1969 won a
Winston Churchill Fellowship to research office planning and construction in
Europe, Scandinavia and the U.S.A. This was put to good use in designing and
space planning a new headquarters for the Halifax Building Society.
Was Principal and Practice Director in own firm operating in the private sector between 1971 and 2004. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers and a Chartered Architect and is now working as Design Director and Principal Architect in London.
Has extensive commercial experience as lead consultant of multi-professional teams in corporate relocations, creative re-use of industrial buildings, innovative design office facilities and space planning and design of headquarters buildings for large corporations.
Has won numerous Civic trust and RIBA Design Awards for professional work.
Interests include membership of the Waterloo Business Group and Housing Services Agency which he co-founded in 1980 to provide accommodation for the single homeless in London.
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Wow! where to begin and to also keep it short….Truthfully I’ve been blessed, by stumbling into a lifetime of opportunity that kept getting better. I have had careers which were both interesting and profitable. The most exemplary life event was marrying my Nancy, in Dallas, Texas in 1967. In Seattle for the past 31 years, we retired 9/05 and continue to have great times as we travel and now putter doing things of interest. We have one son Andrew, an excellent graphic artist.
In December 1957 I was accepted into the Artificer Apprentice program at HM. Naval Dockyard, Portland. Then immediately became “redundant”, what fun! due to government proposed dockyard closings. I was seconded from HM Dockyard Portland in June1958 to UKAEA Harwell pursuant to an agreement between the Admiralty and the Authority, in order to complete my 5 year indentured apprenticeship. While at Harwell went through Explosives and EOD courses at AWRE Aldermaston. In June 1961 I transferred to AEE Winfrith. I completed my apprenticeship on 30th December 1962.
I left government service in April 1963 and joined the North Sea oil search with Decca Navigator. Six months later Texas Instruments, invited me to join them. An exciting period then commenced in international oil marine seismic operations from Spitzbergen to the Gulf of Sidra, Libya to West Africa. 1965 transferred to land crew operations for two years in Saudi Arabia’s Iraqi Neutral Zone and the Rhub al Khali sand mountain deserts. All noted garden spots. July1966 TI sent me to Dallas to work on development of their new seismic data systems for 3 months. That was when I met Nancy.
That January 6th in Dallas I joined Seismic Engineering as field operations engineer for both marine and land crews in the US. In 1967 went to Indonesia and Brunei to trouble-shoot the marine operations of the German seismic company Prakla. In 1969 the “Awl Bidness” dropped through the floor and most exploration stopped.
Joined a small R&D Explosives company Kinetics International which was developing binary two component explosives. Kinetics was acquired by Atlas Explosives in 1972. As one of Atlas’s marketing and technical managers to the mining, construction, dam building industries and the distributor network of suppliers, many years of interesting experiences occurred. We eventually wound up in Lafayette, N. California.
Energy Sciences Corp of Seattle in late 1977 offered a VP Marketing and Program Management position in their industrial explosives, oil/geothermal well fracturing programs, and ordnance programs. Three years later the company ran into financial straits thus forcing change
Partnering with others in March 1981, we formed a project management firm, Appropriate Technologies, to provide consulting services to developers of hydropower, geothermal, wind and ethanol resources.
After three years, a subsidiary of Southern California Gas Co, Pacific Hydropower hired me as general manager in 1984 to run their hydropower development program from Seattle. We reviewed hydroelectric projects throughout the United States. Six were constructed comprising 52 MW of generation.
In 1989 I joined HDR Engineering, Inc., Bellevue, WA. As Vice President and National Director of Hydropower Services I directed the companies consulting engineering programs. Clients included utilities, private power generators and municipalities involved in hydro and water resources development.
I retired from engineering in 1997 spending the next 8 years developing our personal investments and property management. I joined Nancy as an independent Realtorâ with Windermere Real Estate in Seattle. We retired in September of 2005 and sold our properties. Again luck played a first hand role in that set of decisions.
