Submitted by admin on April 22, 2009 - 22:26
SHORLAND, Francis Brian, O.B.E.
(1909– ).
Director, Fats Research Laboratory, Wellington.
Francis Brian Shorland was born in Wellington on 14 July 1909 and educated at Wellington College and Victoria Univ. College. He joined the accounts branch of the Department of Agriculture in 1927, transferring to the Agricultural Chemical Laboratory in the following year. In 1932, with J. A. Bruce, he advocated the use of thermal heat to generate power and, in 1934, was associated with F. A. Denz in recording the value of New Zealand fish livers for vitamin A oil production. In 1935 he won a Scientific and Industrial Research scholarship which took him to the University of Liverpool, where he studied the composition of New Zealand fish oils and animal fats. He joined the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1945, taking charge of the newly established Fats Research Laboratory a year later. In 1949 Shorland became chairman of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, and president of the institute in 1960. He has been on the council of the New Zealand Association of Scientific Workers since 1949 and was its president in 1954–55. Shorland is an F.R.S.N.Z. and was I.C.I. medallist (1950), Hector medallist (1955), and Liver-sidge lecturer for the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (1955). In 1949 he was awarded the O.B.E.