Alexander Killen MacBeth

Alexander Killen Macbeth was born on 11 August 1889 at Drumbuoy, Strabane, Co. Donegal. He was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, and at University College, London, where he was an 1851 Exhibition Scholar. He returned to Belfast to a staff position and then went, in 1919, to St. Andrews as a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry.

From 1924 to 1928 he was Reader in Chemistry at Durham; in the latter year was appointed to the Angus Chair of Chemistry in the University of Adelaide, which he occupied until his retirement in 1954, when he was created Professor Emeritus.

He held the degrees of M.A. and D.Sc. of the Queen's University, Belfast, and was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1955.

In 1946 he was awarded the C.M.G. for his services to the University of Adelaide and to industry during the war. He actively pursued research up to his retirement and published papers in many fields. During a rather barren period for organic chemistry in Australia he produced a steady stream of work and a number of his former students now occupy prominent positions. His tenure of the Adelaide Chair was in a difficult period, coinciding as it did first with the depression and then with the Second World War. Despite this, he organised a thriving department, starting inidally with one Liebig condenser and a few flasks. He set about with characteristic energy and perseverance to improve the situation and saw built, largely to his own plan, a new chemistry school opened in 1933. He showed the same characteristics during the war in organising the production of drugs such as sulphamerazine, phenacetin and caffeine in improvised equipment and improvised factories. 

He served on the University Council for twelve years, and was a Dean of the Faculty of Science.

He is justly regarded as the most important influence in recent years on the education of pharmacists in South Australia and was largely responsible for the University courses in that subject.

Considered on an international scale his achievements were, like the man himself, rather modest but nevertheless quite definite. His example showed what could be done in Australia and his outlook and clear teaching inspired his students, among whom, to select three at random, are J. R. Price, G. M. Badger and J. A. Mills. In their work is to be found a very clear trace of his influence. Both world chemistry and Australian chemistry in particular would have been much the poorer without his contribution.

He died on 29 May 1957 at Adelaide, South Australia.