Alexander Fleck
Alexander Fleck, 1st Baron Fleck FRS KBE (11 November 1889 – 6 August 1968) was a British industrial chemist.
Fleck was born and educated in Glasgow. The son of a coal merchant, he left school at the age of fourteen to become a laboratory boy at the University of Glasgow. When Frederick Soddy arrived as a lecturer, Fleck became his assistant.
He studied at evening classes, eventually becoming a student and a post graduate researcher at the University. He attained a Doctor of Science degree in the chemistry of radioactive substances. He was associated with the Beatson Oncology Centre where he studied the effects of radium on cancerous growths at the beginning of World War I.
Fleck was appointed to the board of ICI in 1944 and was its chairman from 1953 to 1960. He was also Chairman of Scottish Agricultural Industries, the Coal Board Organization Committee, the Scientific Advisory Council, and the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1955.
In 1960 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject 'Interdependence of Engineering and Chemistry'. He was President of the Royal Institution in 1963. In 1961 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Fleck, of Saltcoats in the County of Ayr.
Lord Fleck died in August 1968, aged 78, when the barony became extinct.
1968 Obituary [1]