Robert Walker Hay

Hay went to Glasgow University to study chemistry, graduating BSc in 1956 and then later receiving a doctorate (PhD) in Carbohydrate Chemistry in 1959.^[1]

Hay moved to New Zealand in around 1962 to take up a post lecturing in both Organic and Inorganic Chemistry at the Victoria University of Wellington. Here, together with Neil Curtis, he formulated the Curtis-Hay ligands, a method of preparing diamines in acetone.^[1]

In 1978 Hay was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Ronald Percy Bell, William Parker, John Michael Tedder, Charles Kemball, Evelyn Ebsworth and Roy Foster.^[2]

The Bob Hay Lectureship was established by the Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Interest Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2001 in Hay's memory.^[3] The lecture is given annually by a younger chemist (within 15 years of the completion of their PhD) working in the area of macrocyclic and/or supramolecular chemistry.