Obituary: Anthony Steele Heath
Research chemist who won SCI’s Jubilee Medal
Anthony Steele Heath, known widely throughout
the chemical industry as Tony, died in April aged 77 following a brain infection. He had been a member of SCI since 1959 and played a prominent role in the London section and in the Society’s fine chemicals group. He was also a member of groups covering food commodities and ingredients.
| ‘His open and engaging
personality made him friends at home and abroad’ |
Heath took a degree in chemistry
at Brunel College, London, UK, and went on to Keble College, Oxford, UK, where a fellow student
was the late Tom Ball, another
long-standing supporter of the London section of which Tony had been treasurer for many years before becoming chairman. He was also awarded the SCI Jubilee Medal for services to the Society.
His open and engaging personality made him friends at home and abroad. He was one of a small group of SCI members determined to contemporise the Jubilee Medal. The award consequently
developed into the prestigious
Centenary Medal which was last awarded in 2004 to Sir Tom McKillop, then SCI world president.
Heath’s industry career began as an analytical chemist with Parke Davis, which he left to join BP Chemicals where he worked largely in chemical research. He also worked briefly with Union Carbide and Pinchin Johnson before joining the UK operations of Roche Products, a subsidiary of Hoffmann La Roche of Switzerland, which provided a major part of his business life. By now had moved from pure research work to chemical market research and marketing in general,
becoming the company’s product manager for chemicals used in the food industry.
This more commercial work fostered a desire to run his own business, leading him to take early retirement 20 years ago to set up a consultancy in marketing and market research, covering the UK, continental Europe and North America.
He finally retired in 2001 to live in Devon with his wife Sheila. Retirement enabled him to indulge his great love, which was cricket. A member of the Marylebone Cricket Club, he took a keen interest in all matters relating to the sport. He was also a keen squash player, playing the game into his seventies.
A mark of the affection in which he was widely held was shown by the large number of relatives and friends who travelled to Tangmere, West Sussex, UK, for his funeral.
- The Centenary Medal
The SCI Centenary Medal was initially struck in 1981 to commemorate SCI’s first 100 years and acknowledges figures of distinction in science-based industry or commerce. Its list of recipients reads like a Who’s Who of the chemical industry, and includes many illustrious figures including former ICI chiefs Sir Denys Henderson and Sir John Harvey-Jones.
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