Greatest Kiwi Of All Time: No. 84 - Alan McDiarmid (Down 9 from 75 last year)
Not many New Zealanders have been awarded the Nobel Prize. And you wouldn’t put your money on a Wairarapa boy who loved colour and chemistry scoring one. But Alan McDiarmid did.
Alan won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry at the turn of the millennium and became New Zealand's third Nobel Laureate in the process. And it’s not rocket science. Alan says it's good, old-fashioned hard work that got him there.
Born in Masterton in 1927, educated at Hutt Valley High and Victoria Uni, Alan ended up a naturalised US citizen in the 1950s after he married an American woman and wanted the right to vote in the US elections and voice his political opinions in a meaningful way. On receiving his Nobel Prize, Alan told the audience he’s still a Kiwi by law, and he never forgot his roots
Alan made a huge contribution to science and education including his discoveries of conducting polymers, which earned him the Nobel Prize in 2000.
Our capital has paid tribute to Alan with the Alan MacDiarmid Building at Victoria University - where he was “lab boy” and cleaner before coming full circle and completing his Bachelor of Science there in 1947.
He also fondly remembers some schooling in Kerikeri in Northland where his school chums - quote - were Maori girls and boys from whom I learnt so much. He also delivered milk and newspapers for a while as a teen, to help bring money into his struggling family who Alan says were poor but also close-loving.
Alan says the fact they were poor, made his siblings self-reliant and conscious of the value of money and the importance of helping the less fortunate.
Alan passed away in February 2007. The Wairarapa-born chemist is one of Today FM’s Greatest Kiwis of All Time.
GKOAT 23 - Thanks to resene.
Today FM's Greatest Kiwis Of All Time, thanks to Resene - helping Kiwis decorate with NZ made paints since 1946.
