Phyllis McKie

Of all the women chemists, Phyllis Violet McKie24 of the University College of Wales, Bangor, one of Orton s protegees, seems to have been the most productive during the war period. McKie was part of the team at Bangor producing paraldehyde.25 In addition, she devised a new method for the preparation of the explosive tetranitromethane for the Ministry of Munitions, and she studied methods of preparation of saccharin and vanillin for war purposes.26 Orton reported back to the War Committee  

Miss McKie s investigations have been mainly concerned with a study of the methods of preparation of materials offensive and defensive for the Department of Explosives Supply. Her work had been particularly successful as in the two cases investigated, new and far superior methods of preparation have been discovered and examined.25 

McKie was on bom 18 July 1893, the daughter of William McKie, Clerk at the Pemyhyn Quarry Office. She was educated at the County School for Girls, Bangor, and entered the University College of Wales, Bangor, in 1912. McKie completed her B.Sc. in 1916, and was awarded an M.Sc. by research on the basis of her war work. A total of 12 publications resulted from the different directions of war research which she initiated at Bangor. 

By 1920, McKie had moved to University College, London (UCL), before being appointed Demonstrator at Bedford College in 1921, the same year that she was awarded a Ph.D. (London) in chemistry. She then moved to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, on a Research Fellowship for the 1925/1926 academic year. 

In 1926, McKie was appointed Head of the Chemistry Department at the Maria Grey Training College, where another Bangor alumna, Alice Smith, had been a Lecturer from 1914 until 1917 (see Chap. 7). Then, in 1929, McKie made yet another move, this time to become a Lecturer in Chemistry at Westfield College, London. The biographer of Westfield College, Janet 

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Two other Demonstrators during this period were Nellie Walker (see Chap. 7), who was at Bedford from 1915 to 1918 before she returned north to Dundee, and the peripatetic Phyllis McKie from 1921 to 1925 (see Chap. 12). 

From 1903 until his death in 1930, Kennedy Joseph Previte Orton108 held the Chair of Chemistry, and the women chemists who came to Bangor all undertook research with him (including Phyllis McKie, see Chap. 12). Orton was a strong believer in the historical context of chemistry, and a quote by one of his obituarists is of note as it mentions the book written by Ida Freund (see Chap. 6) ... 

Sondheimer, noted In 1929 when chemistry teaching started the only place suitable was the attic... however in 1935 the lecturer Dr. Phyllis McKie, was able to transfer her department to the hut, left vacant by the removal of botany to the new laboratory. 27 When McKie left Westfield in 1943 to become Principal of St. Gabriel s Training College, chemistry lapsed at Westfield for several years. McKie remained Principal at St. Gabriel s until her retirement in 1956. 

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