Audeh, Costandi Amin (b 1932 : chemistry graduate : University of Glasgow, Scotland)

Costandi Amin Audeh was born in Nazareth, Palestine in August 1932 . Having attended the Missionary Societies' boarding school, the Bishop Gobat School in Jerusalem, he then continued his education at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon with the intention of pursuing medical studies, as his father and brother had done. Costandi's interest was in fact chemistry, and to that end he applied to the University of Glasgow , Scotland to undertake a degree in this desired subject. A full entrance examination was required by Glasgow, which he duly passed and started Glasgow University's four year BSc course in Applied Chemistry, concurrently taking the Royal College of Science and Technology's course ARTC in Technical Chemistry. Having completed his degrees in 1955 , he secured a research position with the British Rubber Producers' Research Association based in Hertfordshire. In 1958, Costandi returned to the Middle East to work for the Kuwait Oil Company, then owned by British Petroleum and Gulf Oil Corporation. After a period of four years during which he married Margaret Clark, a teacher from Yorkshire, he was transferred to Gulf Oil's headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; his mission was to write a handbook about all aspects of Kuwaiti Crude Oil. He and his wife emigrated to the United States in 1962. His application to the Gulf Research and Development Corporation for educational leave of absence in 1967 was granted, so he returned to the U.K. to study for a D.Phil. in Physical Organic Chemistry at the University of York, accompanied by his wife and two sons. Costandi successfully completed his degree in 1970 , but following his return to America, he then secured employment with Mobil Research and Development Corporation in the Technology Department. His assignment was to develop generalised algorithms to predict the properties of the various commercially obtained refinery products on the properties of small distillate fractions obtained from crude oil by distillation in the laboratory. He retired from Mobil Oil in 1993 , during which time his research, in collaboration with others, attracted sufficient interest for Mobil to approve filing applications for patents with the US Patents and Trademarks Office.