My father, Alastair North, was for many years a professor of chemistry in the UK, before moving in the early 1980s to Thailand to become head of the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, where he has died aged 88.
Born in Aberdeen, he was the son of Norman North, an area manager for the cigarette company John Player, and his wife, Anne (nee Macarthur), a PE teacher. After leaving Aberdeen grammar school in 1950, he went on to study chemistry at Aberdeen University, where he gained a first-class degree. He stayed on there as an assistant lecturer in chemistry while carrying out research into polymer kinetics that led to a PhD in 1957.
For the next year Alastair was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, developing his interest in diffusion controlled radical reactions. In 1958 he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Liverpool University by the chemicals company ICI, and in 1959 he was appointed lecturer in the chemistry department of Liverpool University.
He remained in that role until 1967, when he became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, eventually moving up to be head of its chemistry department, dean of the School of Chemical and Materials Sciences, vice principal and finally deputy principal of the University.
In 1983 he moved to Thailand to take up the position of president of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok. While he was there the institute doubled in size. He was appointed OBE in 1992.
Alastair retired from AIT in 1996, but continued in academia as a visiting professor at the universities of Chiang Mai (1984-2003) and Mahidol (1996-2018) in Thailand, helping to supervise PhD students and deliver postgraduate courses.
His first wife, Charlotte (nee Begg), died in 2017. He is survived by his second wife, Suwan (nee Chathamma), whom he married in 2018, six children, David, Alison, Corinne, Angus, Roddy and me, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
