Nov 12, 2006
Scientists are just people, with all the variety and idiosyncrasy that you would find in any other group of people. The “mad professor” image that the silly children in the media insist on giving them as a stereotype is in fact quite rare.
One who came close to fitting the stereotype died the other day. He was a tall, erect fellow, with unruly hair and a piercing gaze, made more impressive by his habit of raising one eyebrow, and depressing the other so that one bright eye gathered an impression of amazement, while the other peered threateningly out from under its ample brow. The impact of this was in no way diminished by an excessively direct manner, and a wealth of strongly held opinions. If you ventured an opinion, however tentative, it was likely to be dismissed with a curtly expressed “Rubbish!” or “Bloody nonsense!” It was as well to be prepared for it. Actually, if you could keep your nerve enough to look deeply into the blazing eye, there was in its hidden depths, a sparkle of humour. The old bugger got joy out of the astonishment that he could evoke in his audience.
During the war he had been drafted into the army and sent to the Pacific, and spent a couple of years, as he put it, “Baking bread for the troops of the New Zealand Third Division.” Why such a talented fellow should have been given such a lowly and monotonous job is a bit of a puzzle, but as he could never take the army seriously, perhaps it was their way of getting even with him. On the other hand the army had some abstruse procedures for assigning people to its various functions. Anyone with a mathematics qualification was automatically assigned to the artillery, because he would be able to calculate the range of a shell under various circumstances, even if the recruit was in fact lighter and smaller in stature than the shells he was expected to load into the gun. Perhaps they also felt that as baking involved a certain amount of obscure chemistry, it would be a logical field for a man with a degree in that subject. Who knows?
With it all he was a very competent plant pathologist and chemist, and this country will never know how much its economy owes to him and his research, for he was responsible for developing the timber treatments on which our timber and building industries came to be based.
Before the age of tanalising and boric treatment, our radiata pine was regarded almost entirely as a source of pulp for the manufacture of paper of one sort and another. The big mills at Kawarau and Kinleith were primarily paper mills. True they produced some sawn timber, but it was considered as being only fit for interior furnishing and fittings for buildings. Framing, floors and weatherboards were always made of rimu or matai, and the State Advances Corporation, the principal source of loan money for housing, would not lend money on untreated pine for these purposes. Naturally the insurance companies followed suit and wouldn’t lend on it either. But boric treated pine was another matter, and as the rimu and matai were running out, it suddenly became possible to borrow money and build with this new and abundant material. Tanalised pine could even be used in contact with the ground, and pole houses on steep sections were soon all the rage. All of this thanks to Ken Harrow.
At this point we should digress a moment and examine the credentials of the State Advances Corporation. It was a government lending institution for advancing money for various causes which the insurance companies and the banks were unwilling or unable to finance. After the First World War, when there was a big demand for new houses for the returning servicemen, State Advances lent money pretty freely, often advancing 90 or 95% of the cost of the house. As many of the customers had limited resources of their own, they did not spare money for drains or paths, and when a house was built on a hillside, stormwater often drained straight under the house. Furthermore, building regulations at the time did not provide for any subfloor ventilation, so the area under the house became damp and humid, and this contributed to a serious borer problem if the floor joists were of “ordinary building” rimu, as they usually were, rather than heartwood.
Of course, towards the end of the twenties the Great Depression struck, many of the householders were unable to keep up their mortgage payments, and had to vacate their properties. However, when State Advances tried to resell the houses, they found they were unfit for sale on account of the borer. Their inspectors found, however, that those that happened to have good subfloor ventilation were unaffected, and in due course the building regulations were changed to require that all houses should have provision for vents to allow an air current under the floor joists.
Meanwhile the supply of rimu was running out, and in the 1950’s people were beginning to look to radiata pine as a substitute. However, State Advances, having had their fingers burnt once, were not prepared to lend on this new and untried material. There was anecdotal evidence that pine was not susceptible to borer, (I recall being told of a house built of pine in which, after twenty years, the only borer was in a piece of “o/b” rimu in a door frame). Ministry of Works, who had no requirement to borrow from State Advances and were thus immune from their regulations, built all the houses for their hydro projects at Twizel and Benmore from untreated pine, with subfloor ventilation, and they lasted without borer for fifty years and more.
Nevertheless, when Ken Harrow developed his treatments for borer proofing and rot proofing pine, State Advances were still unwilling to accept the new building material, and summoned Ken before a Commission of Enquiry, to justify his claims for it. Some of their legal counsel were rather scathing in their cross examination of him, and no doubt got the sharp edge of his tongue in response.
So why has he not become famous like Rutherford or Barrett-Boyes? Well it was partly due to his abrupt manner, and his inability to suffer fools, even wealthy and important fools, gladly. In addition he had a somewhat cavalier attitude towards bodily functions, and did not regard a bit of flatulence as a matter calling for either apology or restraint. You can’t send a man like that to take tea with the Queen can you? Perhaps the Queen Mother would have been more understanding though.
One of Harrow’s technicians who had been decently brought up, and who was close to retirement age, claimed that on his last day of work, when he was no longer subject to the Public Service regulations, he was going to “clip Harrow one” for all the embarrassment he felt he had suffered.
Likewise, the manager of the research orchard at Oratia expressed his disgust that Harrow, in the middle of explaining plant breeding principles to an eminent visiting British scientist, had turned away from him to urinate against a little tangelo tree, continuing the conversation over his shoulder meanwhile. This isn’t the sort of behaviour that is likely to get you invited to Government House.
But that was old Ken, with a rather too rational idea of what is really important in life, and what is not. Yet he did more for this country’s economy than anyone since Bruce Levy promoted the value of his mixture of ryegrass and clover. How unfair that when he died he was more widely known for his support of the arts in Auckland than for his service to the nation’s forests.
By way of a postscript, perhaps it should be mentioned that it is not necessary now to use boric treated pine for house framing. The building regulations have been changed. Provided it is kept dry it will last without rot or borer for donkey’s years, and if, through faulty construction, the building leaks so that the framing is continually wetted, the boric treatment will soon rinse out of it anyway, and it will rot whether treated or not. However, tanalised timber is still necessary where it is in contact with the ground.