Douglas Frank Twiss 1883–1951

Abstract

Abstract Among the celebrated names of those who have contributed so much in the last thirty years to rubber technology is that of Douglas Frank Twiss. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1883, he graduated at Birmingham University and received the Doctor of Science degree in 1910. Among other academic qualifications, he was a Bachelor of Science of London University and became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry in 1908, on whose Council he served for nine years. He was also one of the pioneer members of the Institution of the Rubber Industry at its inception in 1921, and in 1934 he received the highest honor the Institution awards—the Colwyn Gold Medal—for his outstanding scientific work in rubber technology. During the long and active part he played in the British rubber industry, he served on various committees of the Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers and the Institution of the Rubber Industry. Dr. Twiss's first appointment was as a lecturer in chemistry at the Birmingham College of Technology until 1914, when he joined the Dunlop Rubber Company to form a Chemical Research Department. Within a year he was appointed Chief Chemist, a position he held until his retirement in 1946. Some idea of his wide and varied interests can be obtained from over seventy scientific publications and two hundred patent specifications bearing his name and sometimes those of his fellow workers. He was also part author of a text book on practical organic chemistry and two volumes on inorganic chemistry dealing with oxygen and sulfur, and he served for many years as Special Editor in rubber and elastomers for British Abstracts.