The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Professor Emeritus James Cairns
James (Jim) Cairns, Professor Emeritus of Materials Science at Dundee University, has died.
Right until the end Prof Cairns was living up to his reputation as one of the country’s leading and most respected research scientists.
At the age of 81 his latest development was using the biocidal properties of silver as an antibacterial to reduce the effect of hospital and other infections.
The project was in association with Ninewells Hospital in Dundee where he died peacefully after a short illness.
Prof 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 Dundee University 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.
But Prof Cairns never stopped working, donning his tie and tweed jacket to go to the university.
However, Prof Cairns’ valuable contribution to scientific research was almost lost before his career even started.
On March 13 1941, when he was five, a bomb made a direct hit on the building where the Cairns family lived in Clydebank.
Fortunately the youngster and his family had made it to the air raid shelter before the explosion.
Educated at St Stephen’s RC Primary School in Dalmuir and St Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton, he went to Glasgow University and graduated with an honours degree in chemistry in 1958.
He worked as a teacher for several years before returning to Glasgow University for post-graduate research.
After graduating with a PhD in chemistry in 1967, Prof 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 subjects 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 Applied Chemistry Group at the Harwell Laboratory and collaborated with a wide range of industrial companies.
In 1989 he returned to Scotland to take up the role of Professor of Microelectronics and Materials Science at Dundee.
Two years later he was appointed Emeritus Professor at Dundee.
Despite his burdening workload, Prof Cairns was a devoted family man.
He met May at a dance in Glasgow and they married at St Mary’s Church in Cleland in 1963. They had three children. Dundee principal Professor Sir Pete Downes 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.
“He will be greatly missed but the university is thriving by delivering through the values that Jim represented.”
Prof Cairns is survived by his three children – Fiona, Stephen and Paul – and seven grandchildren – Morten James, Thomas, Sophie, Euan, Isabelle, Emma and Aidan.