Professor David M Goodall obituary
10 March 1941 – 15 January 2025
David Goodall was a physical/analytical chemist who spent most of his career at the University of York. He made a significant contribution to the theory and development of capillary electrophoresis, chiral analysis and miniaturised detectors. He was instrumental in developing UV imaging and fluorescence detection for applications in biopharmaceutical and drug formulation development.
Even in retirement, his impact continued as Director and the Chief Scientific Officer of Paraytec, a spin-out scientific instrument company he founded, that develops high performance specialist detectors for the analytical and life sciences instrumentation market. His legacy extends far beyond York, reaching USA, China and Taiwan, as well as across the UK, through his former research group members.
Born in Manchester, he attended Manchester Grammar School and an open Hasting’s Scholarship took him up to the Queen’s College, Oxford to read chemistry, where he co-authored his first paper, “A Theoretical Study of H-Quinolizines”, with his tutor, Morrin Acheson.
David's DPhil thesis on “Kinetic Hydrogen Isotope Effects” was supervised by Ronnie Bell. A Fulbright Scholarship then took him to Cornell University, where he furthered his research in this field with Frank Long. In 1966, David joined the University of York’s Department of Chemistry in only its second year, as a lecturer in physical chemistry. He was promoted to a chair in 2001, and retired in 2007.
He continued to study the kinetics of reactions in solution, devising flash-photolysis and temperature-jump experiments for the undergraduate practical course. He carried out several studies of the ionization of water following irradiation by a high-powered argon-ion laser. In the 1980s, he became interested in the kinetics of the disorder to order transition in polysaccharides and, more generally, gel formation in food hydrocolloids.
This led in the 1990s, to his participation in two MAFF and EU LINK projects involving Nestlé and the Biology Department, and later alongside, Unilever, SIK (Gothenburg), ENSIA (Paris), the University of Trieste, and the University of Santiago de Compostela.
Crucial for much of his subsequent research was his design of a device, many orders of magnitude more sensitive than conventional methods, to measure millidegree changes in optical rotation, initially used in a polarimetric stopped-flow apparatus and later in a diode-laser-based polarimetric detector for high-performance liquid chromatography.
This involvement in separation science led to research in the then-new technique of capillary electrophoresis (CE). His dedication to education was evident in the CE Short Courses he organised at York for 20 years, attracting delegates from across Europe.
A pivotal moment in his career came in 1990 when his group demonstrated CE at the Royal Society Annual Science Soirée. The following year he received the Chromatographic Society Jubilee medal for his design and development of an optical rotation LC chiral detector. He was always striving to design better detectors by exploiting new devices, such as solid state lasers and image sensors developed for mobile phones.
His work was also recognised by the RSC’s Analytical Separations Methods award in 1999 for his “significant contribution to the theory and development of capillary electrophoresis, chiral analysis and miniaturised detectors”. During his career, David published 160 articles and patents.
David was instrumental in setting up a Liberal Party presence in York and went on to serve on North Yorkshire County Council as Councillor from 1985 to 1993. He was also a Governor of Huntington School.
Even in his final months, David remained irrepressibly optimistic and boundlessly enthusiastic. Captivated by the recent display of the Northern Lights over York, he was already thinking of a way to take better pictures of the aurora, by putting a triple bandpass optical filter over a mobile phone camera lens, and actively planning to take family members on holiday to observe them in Finland.
David's eclectic passions spanned a remarkable range: from cross-country skiing around York, the Tour de France, riding a moped, and reading about the origin of our species, to playing piano, collecting kaleidoscopes, and supporting local painters and potters.
David passed away at home on the 15 January 2025 aged 83. He is survived by his wife Denise, children Simon, Rachel and Sarah and two grandsons Jasper and Ozzy.
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