Research scientist and Professor Emeritus at Dundee

Born: July 1, 1936;

Died: March 31, 2018

PROFESSOR Jim Cairns, who has died aged 81, was one of the country's leading and most respected research scientists and was living up to his considerable reputation right up until the end.

At the age of 81 his latest development was using the biocidal properties of silver as an anti-bacterial to reduce the effect of hospital and other infections.

The project was in association with Ninewells Hospital in Dundee where ironically he passed away peacefully after a short illness.

Professor Cairns was the author of 40 patents and more than 150 scientific papers in a remarkable career which began at the Atomic Energy Research

Establishment at Harwell in Oxfordshire in 1967.

He was devoted to the University of Dundee where he was held in the highest regard for his inventions and painstaking research and was appointed

Professor Emeritus at his official retiral in 2001.

However, Professor Cairns never stopped working as his son Paul eloquently explained during his eulogy at the funeral mass at St Stephens Church in

Dalmuir near Clydebank. He told the service:"He absolutely loved Dundee University. It's incredible to me that he retired 16 years ago but every day he would put on his tie and regulation tweed jacket and head into the university.

"Dad was very proud of being a professor there and I have to believe that he encouraged scores of students with the enthusiasm he would have shown for his subject matter."

However, Professor Cairns' valuable contribution to scientific research was almost lost before his career even started.

He was born in 1936 to Scottish parents James and Catherine Cairns who had moved to London from Clydebank after they were married to seek a better life for themselves.

But after the Second World War broke out his maternal grandmother back in Clydebank repeatedly contacted the family urging them to move back as she feared the capital "was going to get blown to bits" by German bomber planes.

Eventually Jim's mother succumbed to her mother's pleas and the family returned to Clydebank where they rented a house in Jellicoe Street in Dalmuir. Despite leaving London because it was dangerous, the family home was hit during the Clydebank blitz on March 13, 1941 - fortunately, Jim and the rest of the family had made it to a shelter.

Educated at St Stephen's RC Primary School in Dalmuir and St Patrick's High School in Dumbarton where he achieved nine Highers, Jim Cairns went to Glasgow University and graduated with an honours degree in chemistry in 1958. He began his working life as a teacher for several years before returning to Glasgow University for post-graduate research.

After graduating with a Ph.D in chemistry in 1967, Professor Cairns was appointed a senior scientific officer at Harwell which had a worldwide reputation for nuclear energy research applied to electricity generation.

Through promotions he became a group leader responsible for directing more than 50 scientists in research on topics including materials chemistry, catalysis and surface materials characterisation. He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree by Glasgow University in 1979.

Between 1981 and 1988 he was the head of the Applied Chemistry Group at the Harwell Laboratory and collaborated with a wide range of industrial companies including Johnson Matthey, Rolls Royce and IBM travelling to the United States to share his expertise.

In 1989 he returned to Scotland to take up the role of Professor of Microelectronics and Materials Science at the University of Dundee.

Two years later he was appointed Emeritus Professor at the University of Dundee but retirement was never on the cards and he continued his research work for another 16 years.

In 2010 he was awarded the Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to investigate methods of producing nano-size metal dispersions in aqueous media.

He was an author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers, including numerous presentations at international conferences.

Professor Cairns - a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh - was an author or co-author of 40 patents. These included development of motor exhaust catalysts to reduce environmental pollution.

Despite his burdening workload, Professor Cairns was a devoted family man.

He met his future wife May at a dance at the Bundoran Club in Glasgow and drove her home to Cleland in Lanarkshire but got a puncture on his way back to Clydebank. He later said he regretted not asking to see her again knowing only that she worked in a hospital. He phoned round all the hospitals before tracking her down to Law Hospital.

They married at St Mary's Church in Cleland in 1963 with the wedding reception held in the Tudor Hotel in Airdrie. They had three children and were happily married for 52 years before May died in 2015.

Outwith his family, the man who probably knew him best was long-standing friend John Hislop who was a fellow PhD student at Glasgow University and also worked at Harwell at the same time.

Dr Hislop said:"He was extremely well regarded by his colleagues in the field of research science.

"Jim started his career in teaching and he showed a lot of guts to give that up to go back to university as he had a young family but it showed he had a great dedication to research.

"His teaching background stood him in good stead in my view because he had this great capability of explaining complicated science in a simple way."

Professor Sir Pete Downes, principal of the University of Dundee, said: "Jim's extraordinary inventiveness and his determination to create things of practical and economic value based on his research has had a great influence on the ethos of the university and, on me, personally."

Professor Cairns is survived by his three children Fiona, Stephen and Paul and seven grandchildren Morten James, Thomas, Sophie, Euan, Isabelle, Emma and Aidan.

RJF