Agriculture Post For N.Z. Man

Press, Volume C, Issue 29682, 28 November 1961, Page 6

Agriculture Post For N.Z. Man

{From the Londcn Correspondent of "The I ress' ] LONDON. A New Zealand scientist with a background of academic accomplishment has been recently appointed chairman of the Executive Council of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau. He is Dr. V. Armstrong, who, since 1952, has been in charge of the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research London Office.

The Commonwealth organisations under the administration of the executive council are the Institute of Entomology, the Mycological Institute, the Institute of Biological Control, and the Bureaux of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Animal Health, Animal Nutrition, Dairy Science and Technology, Forestry, Helminthology, Horticulture and Plantation Crops, Pastures and Field Crops, Plant Breeding and Genetics, and Soils. The institutes and bureaux serve as intelligence centres in a variety or ways. For example, the Institute of Entomology’s work is integrated very closely with the British Museum; the Mycological Institute keeps its own working herbarium which contains 80,000 specimens. It also maintains the United Kingdom national collection of type cultures fbr many fungi. Catalogue Kept The Institute of Biological Control prepares and maintains a qf the parasites and predators Pf the insects of the world. Its principal activity, however, is practical and consists mainly in matoiaining a supply of beneficial insects for attacking various peAS. ’ The C.A.B. present budget, of the order qf £500,000, was approved at the review conference held last year at which the New Zealand delegation comprised Dr. W. M. Hanfilfon, secretary of the D.5.1.R., Dr. C. P. McMeeken, of the Ruakura Animal Research Station,, and Dr. Armstrong himself. Dr. Armstrong, who was educated at Greymouth High School and graduated bachelor of science from Canterbury University College, gained his D.I.C. and doctorate at the Imperial College, London, in Fuel Technology and Chemical Engineering under Sir Alfred Egerton. From 1940 to 1942 he was fuel technologist to the D.S.I.R. in New Zealand, and in the latter year he moved to Australia to study munition production. From 1942 to 1945 he was in charge of a factory in New Zealand filling in two and three-inch mortar bombs. In the succeeding four years he was in charge of the Fuel Efficiency Service of the D.S.I.R. in Wellington, and from 1949 to 1952 Dr. Armstrong was Scientific Attache in Washington. From there he became head of the DS.I.R. in London in 1952. He is on the committee of the British Council .of

Science, New Zealand's representative on the Commonwealth Advisory Committeeon Defence Science, and a member of the Board of Governors of the Imperial College. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Fuel, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry and an associate member of the Institute of Chemical Engineers. Dr. Armstrong has been a member of the Commonwealth Bureaux Council since he succeeded Sir Ernest Marsden in 1954, and was vice-chairman last year. But for Dr. Armstrong all is not science. He belongs to the New Zealand Society and is an enthusiastic member of the London-New Zealand Cricket Club. As opportunity permits he relaxes on the golf course. Mrs Armstrong was formerly Miss Adelaide Mowatt, of Lower Hutt. Dr. and Mrs Armstrong have two children, a girl of 16 and a boy of 13, who are at school in Surrey.