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1. About Ray Spier. Having been educated at Christ Church, Oxford and University College, London in Biochemistry (First Class Honours), Chemical Microbiology and Biochemical Engineering he then spent 7 years as a Senior Process Engineer in industry. The last 3 years in America were spent with Merck Sharpe and Dohme where he was introduced to animal cell biotechnology and the production of viruses for use in veterinary and human vaccines. On returning to the UK he worked for 10 years at the Animal Virus Research Institute, Pirbright, scaling-up bioreactors for virus vaccine production processes and maximizing the biological productivity of the BHK cell lines for Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus generation. He then moved to the University of Surrey as Professor and was Head of Microbiology (7 years) and in 1997 he was appointed to the first chair in the UK in ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. His publication record includes over 200 research papers and reviews along with over 20 edited books and an encyclopedia on animal and plant cell culture technology. In 2002 his book ‘Ethics Tools and the Engineer’ was published by CRC Press. He founded the journal Vaccine in 1983 of which he was the Editor in Chief for 28 years, and in 1994 he founded the journal Science and Engineering Ethics of which he was Co-Editor in Chief. Having founded the European Society for Animal Cell Technology in 1975 and the International Society for Vaccines in 1996 (President: 2007–11:Fellow 2013), he was elected to be President of the European Association for Higher Education in Biotechnology in 2000. In his retirement from formal employment he edited the journal Science and Engineering Ethics and progressed his ideas for an improved appreciation of the nature of “Science”. Dr. Spier passed away in April 2018.
