My father, Raoul Feld, who has died aged 89, was an expert on titanium – a light, metallic element whose compounds have many uses in modern life, and which he researched while working for many years with the Laporte chemical company. In particular his studies led to big improvements in paint quality through the use of titanium dioxide, which is the whitest substance known to man.
Raoul was born in Vienna, the only child of Polish parents: his father, Leib (known as Leo), was a Jewish brushmaker; his mother, Antonie (nee Sochacki), a Catholic nurse. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the three of them moved to Berlin, where the eight-year-old Raoul witnessed marching Nazis and Kristallnacht. Antonie escaped to Britain in 1939 and Raoul arrived shortly afterwards in London on a Kindertransport train, while Leo managed to join them a year later.
Raoul picked up English swiftly and at Wandsworth grammar school in south-west London, which was relocated to Reading, Berkshire, during the second world war, he excelled in cricket, was a champion athlete and swimmer, and became head boy. He went on to Battersea College of Technology (now part of the University of Surrey), where he obtained a degree, and then a PhD, in chemistry.
He met Eileen Parnell, a trainee tailor at Harrods, on a Northern Line tube train in 1947 and they married in 1953. He did three years of national service in 1956 as a flight lieutenant and then joined Laporte at their Luton plant in 1959, before moving to their Stallingborough site in Lincolnshire.
There his research led to a series of technical patents, including in relation to the glossiness, dispersibility and coverage of paint. He also wrote a number of research papers and in 1965 was co-author, with Peter Cowe, of a book, The Organic Chemistry of Titanium, which remains a standard text on the subject.
In his spare time Raoul collected stamps and Roman coins – something he had done from an early age. In 1973 he and Eileen opened a shop called Brooklands Collections in Cleethorpes, selling collectibles; Eileen ran the shop in the afternoon and Raoul would join her for evening openings. He retired from Laporte in 1980 and together they ran the shop for 15 more years.
After a heart attack in 1984 that led to quadruple-bypass surgery in 1992 he became fit enough to swim for Grimsby Santa Marina – as a senior – and to become British Masters champion at several distances in freestyle and backstroke. He also travelled widely with Eileen until, after several illnesses, including dementia, she died in 2007.
For his last few years Raoul lived with my sister, Miriam, a nurse, in Woolaston, Gloucestershire, and he revelled in the fact that, as an only child, he had become the patriarch of a family of 32 offspring. He is survived by his six children, Tony, Helen, Miriam, Rupert, Regan and me, 15 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
