Person

McWilliam, Ian Gordon (1933 - 2020)

AO

Born
4 November 1933
Griffith, New South Wales, Australia
Died
9 May 2020
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Physicist

Summary

Ian Gordon McWilliam developed a flame ionisation detector in 1957; this was a new gas chromatography tool capable of measuring components of organic chemicals present in one part in 10 million.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1952
Education - Bachelor of Science (BSc(Hons)), University of Melbourne
1956 - 1968
Career position - Head, Physical Methods Section (later Instrument Development Section), ICI Central Research Laboratories
1961
Award - Rennie Memorial Medal, Royal Australian Chemical Institute
1962
Award - Grimwade Prize, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne
1968 - 1970
Career position - Shell Research Fellow, Monash University
1970 - 1973
Career position - Senior Lecturer, Swinburne Technical College
1970 - 2020
Award - Fellow, Royal Australian Chemical Institute
1973 - 1992
Career position - Principal Lecturer in Chemistry, Swinburne Technical College
1974
Education - Doctor of Science (DSc), Monash University
1983 - 1986
Career position - Chairman, Australian Scientific Industry Association, Victoria
1984
Award - Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for ervice to science and technology
1992
Award - K. L. Sutherland Memorial Medal, Australian Academy of Technological Science and Technology
1992 - 1998?
Career position - Associate Professor in chemistry, Swinburne University of Technology

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Conference Papers

  • McWilliam, I.G., 'The Flame Ionization Detector - an Australian Invention', in Detectors and Chromatography Proceedings of an International Conference held at the University of Melbourne from May 30 to June 3 1983, to celebrate the 25thanniversary of the invention of the Flame Ionization Detector by I.G. McWilliam edited by Nicholson, A.J.C. (Melbourne: Australian Scientific Industry Association, 1983), pp. 5-20.. Details

Journal Articles

  • Spurling, Tom; and Laslett, Bob, 'Ian McWilliam (1933 - 2020): inventor of the flame ionisation detector', Chemistry in Australia, 2020 (July/August) (2020), 34. Details

Resources

See also

  • Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, Online edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, 3 May 2000, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/index_m.html. Details
  • Gold, Ergad; Greener, Rosalie (Ed) ed., Inventive Vics Exhibition (Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Scientific Industry Association, 1985), 58 pp. Flame Ionization Detector. Details

Rosanne Walker and Helen Cohn

Created: 25 May 2001, Last modified: 8 April 2022

EOAS ID: biogs/P003773b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P003773b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260