29/09/2023
Today's appreciation post goes to Sir Geoff Palmer, the first black professor in Scotland🏴. Geoff was born in Jamaica, 1940, and was raised by his aunties before boarding the Empire Windrush in 1955 to join his mother in London. Informed that he had to go to school due to his age, he found a place at Highbury Grammar School after being scouted for excellence in cricket.
After school, Geoff Palmer became a junior lab technician then continued to embark on an undergraduate degree in botany, and eventually onto a master's course with a focus on barley. His work began to gain wide recognition as he developed his famed 'barley abrasion process' which sped up the process to turn barley into malt. This process was used in breweries across the UK, saving millions of pounds for the industry and even producing "one of the famous beers that the Windrush generation drank, called Long Life" [Geoff Palmer]. Geoff then began teaching at Heriot-Watt University becoming the first black professor in Scotland, as well as setting up the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling there.
Alongside his academic achievements, Sir Geoff Palmer's activist work involved writing articles for the Times in efforts to support the education of children of ethnic minorities. He has numerously spoken about Scotland's connection to the slave trade and has most notably campaigned to have the plaques of former slave owners changed to be historically accurate and remembering the people affected by the enslavement. He has called for these changes over the removal of statues all together citing: "We cannot change the past, but we can change the consequences of the past, such as racism, and we can do that through better education.”
Named as one of '100 great Black Britons', Sir Geoff Palmer continues to speak out against racism and makes great impact as the Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
