Abstract
Madam President, esteemed colleagues, and friends
When contemplating what I should say at this auspicious event, I realized that whatever success I have had in my career has been the result of a series of lucky chances. Perhaps the luckiest chance of all was to be born in New Zealand, an isolated country but one with an excellent education system—free through college but subject to qualifying exams at the end of elementary and high school. In 1937 I was in the final year of my M.Sc. program, doing a research project on the electrochemistry of dilute solutions (slightly polluted water), when I picked up the latest issue of the Journal of the Chemical Society and read an article by V. M. Goldschmidt, “The Principles of Distribution of the Chemical Elements in Minerals and Rocks.” It changed my life. Solid-state chemistry had been barely touched on in my chemistry courses–here was a vast field about which I knew nothing but was anxious to learn. At that time, the University of New Zealand had no doctoral program, but one could apply for a graduate scholarship of £200 ($ 1000) a year for two years to study abroad. I received one and wrote to V. M. Goldschmidt in Oslo, explaining my circumstances and saying that I wanted to do research in geochemistry. I received a delightful reply, saying that he would welcome a student from the antipodes and that I could live like a king in Oslo on £200 a year. There was no request for a transcript or other documentation–life was much simpler in those days.
