Methodology
Memoirs, a personal history
R.G. Ackman
Dalhousie University, Canadian Institute of Fisheries Technology, DalTech, PO Box 1000,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 2X4, Canada
Training as a chemist in the 1940 era did not include learning anything
about fats except for soaps. In fact, I was completely unaware of the
extensive and early work of Chevreul and other pioneers in the field of
oils, fats and lipids when I was recruited to the Halifax Technology Laboratory of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada (FRBC) in 1950. This
job however started with teaching industrial technicians how to measure
vitamins A and D in cod liver oil. Thus began a lifelong association with
marine oils, which is why I am able to participate in this very agreeable
meeting of marine lipid scientists. The FRBC, as is was affectionately
called, was a group of elite scientists, dominated by biologists who had
their own “stations” and research vessels. The technologists worked in
separate stations but closely with the fish processing industry in a
period when fish was no longer just iced, salted or smoked, but was
instead now filleted, frozen and distributed all over Canada. Among
the benefits of this far-sighted organization was the emphasis given to
good libraries, and two books had a great influence on my future. One
was Nature Adnft by J.H. Fraser. This book on plankton was fascinating reading and opened up a previously unknown world to me. The
second book was of course the famous Chemical Composition of Natural
Fats by T.P. Hilditch. Both persuaded me that a lowly “Junior Research
Associate” had a limited future so I saved some money, won a scholarship, and went to the Imperial College of Science and Technology in
London, where I was able to begin the serious study of fatty acids under
B.C.L. Weedon.
He heard of a new device for separating fatty acids invented near London, called “vapour phase chromatography”, and by 1956 one was built
for me in his laboratory and eventually I could even separate methyl
palmitate and methyl stearate. This was not actually the work for
which I was given a Ph.D., but it was great fun. Unfortunately, when
I returned to work with the FRBC in Halifax, my superiors fell into the
dreaded “NIH” or “not invented here” trap, so VPC languished unheeded
in Halifax until 1960 when the first US commercial units became
available and the terminology became gas-liquid chromatography or
GLC, now usually GC.
To be fair, there was a stimulating research atmosphere in the Halifax
FRBC laboratory and especially I could work on lipids with another
young Ph.D., E.G. Bligh, who in 1959 published the Bligh and Dyer
lipid extraction method as an adaption of the Folch et al. CHCl 3 -MeOH
method. This is the most cited and probably most misused lipid method
known, and Bligh developed it despite the comment of his superior,
9
Memoirs, a personal history
R.G. Ackman
Dalhousie University, Canadian Institute of Fisheries Technology, DalTech, PO Box 1000,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 2X4, Canada
Training as a chemist in the 1940 era did not include learning anything
about fats except for soaps. In fact, I was completely unaware of the
extensive and early work of Chevreul and other pioneers in the field of
oils, fats and lipids when I was recruited to the Halifax Technology Laboratory of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada (FRBC) in 1950. This
job however started with teaching industrial technicians how to measure
vitamins A and D in cod liver oil. Thus began a lifelong association with
marine oils, which is why I am able to participate in this very agreeable
meeting of marine lipid scientists. The FRBC, as is was affectionately
called, was a group of elite scientists, dominated by biologists who had
their own “stations” and research vessels. The technologists worked in
separate stations but closely with the fish processing industry in a
period when fish was no longer just iced, salted or smoked, but was
instead now filleted, frozen and distributed all over Canada. Among
the benefits of this far-sighted organization was the emphasis given to
good libraries, and two books had a great influence on my future. One
was Nature Adnft by J.H. Fraser. This book on plankton was fascinating reading and opened up a previously unknown world to me. The
second book was of course the famous Chemical Composition of Natural
Fats by T.P. Hilditch. Both persuaded me that a lowly “Junior Research
Associate” had a limited future so I saved some money, won a scholarship, and went to the Imperial College of Science and Technology in
London, where I was able to begin the serious study of fatty acids under
B.C.L. Weedon.
He heard of a new device for separating fatty acids invented near London, called “vapour phase chromatography”, and by 1956 one was built
for me in his laboratory and eventually I could even separate methyl
palmitate and methyl stearate. This was not actually the work for
which I was given a Ph.D., but it was great fun. Unfortunately, when
I returned to work with the FRBC in Halifax, my superiors fell into the
dreaded “NIH” or “not invented here” trap, so VPC languished unheeded
in Halifax until 1960 when the first US commercial units became
available and the terminology became gas-liquid chromatography or
GLC, now usually GC.
To be fair, there was a stimulating research atmosphere in the Halifax
FRBC laboratory and especially I could work on lipids with another
young Ph.D., E.G. Bligh, who in 1959 published the Bligh and Dyer
lipid extraction method as an adaption of the Folch et al. CHCl 3 -MeOH
method. This is the most cited and probably most misused lipid method
known, and Bligh developed it despite the comment of his superior,
9