Birthday sparks special memories for former Croda employee

Published on 1st November 2007 in News

A Rawcliffe-born man who joined Croda Chemicals at 14 years old as an office junior and retired 42 years later as technical director is to celebrate his 90th birthday locally next week.

Edgar Lower turns 90 this weekend and has quite a success story to tell. He began his long and fruitful career when his father called in to local Croda Chemicals and asked if there were any vacancies for his 14-year-old son, who was due to leave school a week later.

Fortunately, the company was looking for an office junior, and Edgar stepped into the role.

Always interested in chemistry at school, Edgar would cheekily borrow books from work and read up on the topic at home. His first promotion happened rather unusually when he took some chemicals home from work to experiment on and caused a small fire in his parents' home!

Edgar said: "The experiment caused a small fire and my dad just picked up the table and threw it out of the window.

"When Croda found out, they said that if I was going to experiment, I may as well do it at work and so I got a job in the lab there."

Edgar progressed to become chief chemist at 21 and became the company's technical director at the age of 28.

Throughout his long career with the company Edgar was involved in setting up a branch of Croda in New York in 1950, and another in Italy in 1955.

As technical director, he travelled the world regularly and gave the keynote speech at the International Cosmetic Chemists Association in Kyoto, Japan in 1967. He retired in 1975 at the age of 56 to write for technical journals that were published all over the world and translated into numerous languages.

"I was very happy at Croda, and used to study chemistry a lot in my spare time," added Edgar.

"Highlights of my career included visiting countries overseas, and lecturing. I also discovered the liquid form of lanolin, called Fluilan, which really helped Croda at the time."

A laboratory at Croda has been named the Edgar Lower Laboratory in honour of Edgar's important work.

Now living in the Hook Hall Residential Home, Edgar - father of Graham and Rosamund Elizabeth and husband to Marjorie - will celebrate his 90th birthday on November 4 at Graham's home, surrounded by family.

Pictured are Edgar and his son Graham prepare for the special birthday. (01-11-34 GT)