Alexander Boden

Alexander Boden (28 May 1913 – 18 December 1993) was a philanthropist, industrialist (manufacturing chemist), publisher (including education author and researcher), founder of the Boden Chair of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney, a Fellow Australian Academy of Science 1982, a founder of Bioclone Australia, Hardman Chemicals and Science Press and was awarded Leighton Medal of Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1986. He was educated at the University of Sydney (BSc 1933, Hon DSc 1984) and received an Order of Australia (AO) and he was also the author of A Handbook of Chemistry, initially published by the Shakespeare Head Press and later by his own Science Press. After he graduated, he joined a research laboratory, which he soon took over, and renamed it Hardman Australia. Hardman Australia was turned into a manufacturing company producing in particular DDT. In 1981 he formed Bioclone Australia, which exports diagnostic products. Alex was elected to the Australian Academy of Science on the nomination of Professor John Swan, upon nomination Professor Swan said: "Alex Boden was a man of remarkable talents, concealed by a modest, even humble, exterior. I never saw him angry. He was greatly admired as a man who had achieved much in life but whose ambition was to contribute to family, social and community welfare, to give rather than take, to be supportive of others, and above all to foster the advancement of science." Alexander Boden was born on 28 May 1913, shortly after his parents William and Helena Boden arrived in Australia from Ireland. His parents established a drapery business in the main shopping centre of the Sydney suburb of Chatswood. Alex was the middle child between his two sisters. His father, William Boden, was born in Ballinasloe on the border of counties Galway and Roscommon. In Williams youth, he went to join his uncle in the latter's evidently prosperous drapery story in Magherafelt, County Londonderry. A surviving photograph of the staff of the store is impressive: some fifty men and women in starched collars and prim blouses stand in well-ordered ranks.