Obituary

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31904, 4 February 1969, Page 14

Obituary

MR W. F. BOLAND

Mr William Frederick Boland, a former Mayor of Waimate for 15 years, died in Waimate on Saturday. He was 69.

Mr Boland was born at Papakaio, near Oamaru, and was educated at Waitaki Boys’ High School and Victoria University College, where he studied law after working for a short time in the Post Office in Wellington. In 1924, Mr Boland began practice in law in Waimate, founding a partnership with Mr N. L. Knell.

Mr Boland was Mayor of Waimate from 1935 to 1956, the second-longest term in the borough’s history. He had previously been a borough councillor, from 1933 to 1935.

. Mr Boland was a past president of the Waimate County Red Cross, former chairman of the Waimate Rehabilitation Committee and its representative on the Canterbury Rehabilitation Committee, former deputy chairman of the South Canterbury Manpower Committee, and former chairman of the Waimate Centennial Committee. At the time of his death he was patron of the Waimate Competitions Society, in which he had been interested since its formation in 1938.

In his youth, Mr Boland was a keen Rugby player. He represented Victoria University College and played for the Marist Club in Wellington. He also played senior club Rugby when he first went to Waimate. : Mr Boland is survived by his wife and one daughter.

Dr M. T. CHRISTENSEN

Dr M. T. Christensen, a senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Canterbury, who died recently in Christchurch, was a university teacher with a pronounced influence on the thinking and attitude of his students.

For almost all his academic life, Dr Christensen was associated with the university to which he came from Christchurch Boys’ High School in 1944. In his third year he had the unusual distinction of winning the Haydon Prize for the best student of the year in both chemistry and physics, and was awarded the Sir George Grey Scholarship. He maintained an impartial interest in chemistry and physics. He took a first-class honours degree in chemistry and completed a Ph.D. degree in the physics department under the late Professor F. C. Chalklin. It was while he was still studying for that degree that he was appointed to the staff of the chemistry department. In 1953 Dr Christensen was awarded a Sims Empire Scholarship and spent two years working with Dr H. W. Thompson at the University of Oxford on infra-red spectroscopy.

Dr Christensen was regarded as an outstanding teacher whose lectures in thermodynamics were models of clarity and logical thinking. To him, students were all-important, and he gave generously of his time. His health had been bad for many years before his death, but among his colleagues, his failing health was to a large extent hidden by a natural cheerfulness and an indomitable will to take his full part in departmental teaching. He is remembered by many with affection and respect.