Rob graduated at the University of Cape Town, South Africa with a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering in 1969. In 1971 he completed an M.Sc. in Engineering at UCT.

Rob worked briefly in a technical capacity in the petrochemical, nuclear and biomedical industries before joining the synthetic fibre industry where he worked for SANS Fibres in South Africa. Here he held senior technical, project and site management positions. He developed very good working relationships with their British and Japanese machinery and technology suppliers. He found great pleasure in learning Japanese culture, and particularly their quality management philosophy much of which he implemented at the SANS production sites.

In 1988 Rob was seconded to Imperial Chemical Industries in London from where he managed the technical interface between ICI and its South African subsidiary AECI. It was in London where he first became aware of the nature of environmental alarmism with the big issue of the time being the impending ban on CFCs. Fortuitously, ICI had a solution to the problem.

After three years in London, Rob returned to South Africa where he joined the titanium dioxide industry as Managing Director of Tioxide SA. In 1995 he transferred to the Tioxide Group in Teesside, NE England in a senior technical capacity. After the company was acquired by Huntsman in 1999, he became Senior Vice President Commercial. In this global role Rob spent much of his time travelling around the world to the nine countries where Huntsman had manufacturing and sales activities. Huntsman Pigments faced severe environmental scrutiny. By introducing detailed life cycle analyses and developing commercial outlets for the factories’ coproducts he was able to successfully defend Huntsman’s manufacturing record and keep the environmental activists at bay.

Managing colleagues from many diverse cultural backgrounds was one of the most enjoyable aspects of working in a global business.

Rob retired in 2005 and now lives in the market town of Stokesley in North Yorkshire, England. He still travels a lot, visiting family and friends around the world.

In his retirement Rob has taken to lecturing physics to several U3A Science Groups in the UK and SA as well as to schools and to the UCT annual Summer School ever January. He is also a keen photographer.

Rob is a sincere environmentalist. His roots keep him keenly interested in the wellbeing of African and other wildlife. He is keenly interested in real climate-related science which he has been studying for the past few years. His plans are to teach/lecture the subject to science groups and to spread the truth about carbon dioxide and its benefits to society as far and wide as he can.