DR. LLEWELLYN A Distinguished Career

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29264, 23 July 1960, Page 15

DR. LLEWELLYN A Distinguished Career

(By a Special Correspondent]

Dr. Llewellyn is unquestionably the most widely-eompetent person ever to enter the University of Canterbury. He combines a brilliant flair for administration with an almost unbelievable understanding of the detailed academic work of all the departments which he controls.

These complex capacities are founded on his outstanding records in science and research and his personal participation in the arts. (He is a gifted pianist and organist.) Double doctorates in philosophy and science from the University of Birmingham, and fellowships of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry; and the Royal Society of Arts are among Dr. Llewellyn’s academic titles.

But it is as a planner that he has built his high reputation in this country. To him the University of Canterbury owes its present almost complete plan for coping with rapidly rising numbers and for the transfer of the university to Ilam. The move to the new site and the building of the engineering school had been decided when he came here; but he has seen the first major building completed and handled the tricky progressive occupation of sections finished ahead of schedule.

He took immense personal responsibilities in the planning of the new £2,250,000 science buildings and in the negotiations leading to Government approval for detailed work to proceed forthwith. Already he has space schedules ready for the arts faculty which will be the last major departments to move to Ilam.

Dr. Llewellyn was also an influential “witness” in the sittings of the Parry Committee which drew up the blueprint for the future development of universities in New Zealand. He has had a leading part in talks toward the devolution of authority from the University of New Zealand to the constituent universities in the four main centres.

All this experience will be invaluable in his new appointment which will involve the planning and co-ordination of future university education throughout the country. Early Sueeesses

Educated at Dursley Grammar School in Gloucestershire from 1921, Dr. Llewellyn entered Birmingham University in 1932, and there he held a Gloucester County Higher Exhibition until 1938, the Chidlaw Research Scholarship in 1935-36, the Caroline Harold Research Fellowship in 1936-37, and the Dudley Docker Research Fellowship in 1937-38. He was later awarded the Foundation

1.C.1. Research Fellowship. Dr. Llewellyn graduated bachelor of science with first-class honours in chemistry in 1935. was awarded the doctorate in philosophy in 1938 and the doctorate in science in 1951. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry in 1947 and a-Fel-low of the Royal Society of Arts in 1952.

In 1938 and 1939, he was research assistant to Professor W. Wardlaw at Birkbeck College of the university of London, and from then until 1945 was lecturer in inorganic and structural chemistry at Birkbeck. The Foundation 1.C.1. Fellowship from 1945 ’to 1947 was associated with the post of honorary lecturer in physical and inorganic chemistry at Birmingham. During the Second World War. Dr. Llewellyn was director of Ministry of Supply research teams and consultant on the safety of ordnance factories. He was associated with the building of the first "block-buster,” one of Britain’s biggest bombs. In 1947 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the University of Auckland, served on the

University Council from 1951 to 1954, and was acting principal in 1953. Overseas Trips Since coming to New Zealand, Dr, Llewellyn has made extensive trips abroad. He attended the conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in Hobart in 1949 and in Sydney in 1952, the American Chemical Society’s jubilee meetings in New York in 1952 (and then travelled in the United States Canada, and Britain visiting many universities), the executive meetings of the Associtaion of Universities of the British Commonwealth in Pakistan in 1956, the Commonwealth Universities’ Congress in Canada in 1958, and the Conference on Commonwealth Fellowships in England in 1959. Dr. Llewellyn is at present a member of the Senate of the University of New Zealand, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Council for Technical Education, and- the National Council on Adult Education. Dr. Llewellyn was married In 1939. His wife is a graduate of Birmingham in both botany and geology. They have a teen-age son and daughter.