Robert Whytlaw-Gray, 1877-1958

Emeritus Professor Robert Whytlaw-Gray, formerly Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Administrative Head of the Chemistry Department in the University of Leeds, was the grandson of an Armagh man who emigrated to Australia about a hundred years ago with his wife, daughter and son Robert James, and built up a very big business in Sydney. Robert James Cray returned to Britain as a young man to take charge of the London office, and at the age of twenty-seven he married Mary Gilkieson Gemmell, daughter of Robert Adam Whytlaw, of Fenton House, Hampstead, a Glasgow manufacturer of partly Scandinavian origin. The handsome young couple figure in some of the drawings done for Punch by their near neighbour, George du Maurier, during the period of their engagement. Their second surviving son, Robert Whytlaw-Gray, was born in London on 14 June 1877. Whytlaw-Gray received his early education at St Paul’s School; very little science was taught in those days, but he carried out chemical experiments in a cupboard in his sisters’ schoblroom at home at the age of about twelve. His father wanted him to go into the Army and he sat for the entrance examination, but failed through complete lack of interest, distinguishing himself only by coming out top of the list in chemistry. When he was eighteen he started on an engineering course in the University of Glasgow, where he and his younger sister lived with his grandparents, who now resided there, while his father took his mother and elder sister with him on a business visit to Australia.