Prof Desmond Cunningham: Des Cunningham was a chemistry professor in NUI, Galway. He was from Mountcharles in Donegal where his father was a school principal. In his early years music and painting competed with his interest in science. He chose chemistry when a career decision had to be made.
Post-doctoral research in London, in the then Northern Polytechnic, introduced him to the chemistry of tin which became a lifelong interest. He moved to a lectureship in Galway in 1971.
It is said by some that academics have little interest in Irish industry. However, this is rarely true in chemistry.
A multi-national pharmaceutical company had a major problem with a tin catalysed reaction which was producing more than 20 per cent of its worldwide profits.
The company searched for a tin expert to sort out their problem and found Des. Their process produced the desired drug in an hour but left a terrible mess of tin oxide behind which took many hours to clean up and limited runs to one a day.
Des sorted this out using inexpensive chemicals and turned the mess into a lovely white powder which was easy to deal with. Production was tripled and three runs a day became the norm in all plants in which the drug was produced.
Des had often dreamed of setting up crystallography in Ireland and in the late 1970s spent a year on sabbatical leave in Oklahoma where he got experience in running a crystallography laboratory.
Using second-hand equipment from Canada and in collaboration with two of his colleagues, the Crystallography Centre in Galway was established. This was a great success.
Two successive HEA large equipment grants provided funds for more modern equipment. This led to further success and Des was one of the first two Irish chemists to move into the top 10,000 chemists list by citation.
One of the most important pharmaceutical applications of crystallography is in the identification of the exact crystal form of a drug that is being marketed.
The appearance of an unknown crystal form may make a drug unmarketable. A drug that Des examined for a well-known multinational did show a second form.
The company was not pleased and it hired an American consultancy firm whose initial advice was that there was no second form and this was, of course, what it wanted to hear.
Following the presentation of incontrovertible evidence from Galway, the American consultants produced a final report which did no more than confirm the Galway findings.
Des was amused to see that these "experts", in confirming his findings in their final report had, in fact, used software which had been developed by the Crystallography Centre in Galway.
Undergraduates from the past will remember his artistic use of coloured chalk in chemistry lectures which developed as technology became available into electronic presentations which were as beautiful as his landscape paintings.
In more recent times, Des developed a process for coating glass (and other materials) with tin and other metal oxides. This process has been patented and is superior in every way to existing methods.
These very thin oxide coatings make plate glass windows and glass bottles much stronger than uncoated glass. Commercialisation of this process is currently under way.
During his recent illness he was always optimistic and continued to involve himself in a lot of chemistry, with correcting theses and suggesting reactions from his hospital bed. Several fascinating new compounds were made and their crystal structures solved and examined by Des in the days before he died.
The funeral Mass for Des was celebrated by Fr Denis Crosby in Moycullen Church, Co Galway.
In a ceremony that was punctuated by anecdote, verse and song, the congregation were moved from tears to laughter. Des was laid to rest in the graveyard beside Moycullen church. He thought well of everyone and thus he had more friends than most.
The wonderful atmosphere he could create with his personality, his music and his love of painting will long be remembered by all who knew him.
Des is survived by his wife Patsy, his daughter Aileen, his brother Conal and his sisters Sheila and Catherine.
Desmond Cunningham: born March 6th, 1942, died September 18th, 2006