Author

Wallace Rae's university years began in chemical engineering at Canterbury. After modest success in his first professional engineering year he realized his real interest was in the pure chemistry field which he pursued to Masters level. After graduating Wallace began working with Ivon Watkins Dow for 26 years where he was involved in a range of activities from process and formulation development of a number of herbicides and wood preservatives. As the company transitioned into a subsidiary of a multinational, Wallace met a wider range of science colleagues at international conferences and in the various research laboratories of the company in Japan, the USA and Britain. In 1993 Wallace was recognized with an “inventor of the year” award and promoted to senior scientist. Wallace left Dow Elanco in 19696 joining a start up company, Taranaki Nuchem. With its entrepreneurial principals and technical staff, Wallace and the team filed over 50 patents relating to herbicide formulations, micro encapsulation, and wood preservatives and processes. It was here that Wallace learnt to work closely with the business side of things and sales to develop products which were both relevant and profitable. Wallace retired in 2015 and remains a consult informally with Technic Industries based in New Plymouth and with his colleagues at Lonza New Zealand which bought out the company in 2015. As a scientist with many years in the corporate world at Dow Wallace inherited this maxim from his American colleagues: “In God we trust, the rest bring data.”