Close Menu

Professor Kenneth Magnus

Professor Kenneth Magnus

Nov. 27. 1927

Chemist who undertook myriad research studies and pioneered important teaching programmes and initiatives across the region. Professor Kenneth Magnus was an outstanding educator. In 1968, he started the Applied Chemistry Programme at UWI, which became a separate degree at the Mona and St. Augustine Campuses. Between 1969 and 1970, he helped develop the science curriculum for Jamaica's primary and secondary schools.

He introduced the postgraduate Diploma in Sugar Cane Processing, which attracted Caribbean and non-Caribbean students.He conducted research on essential oils, food flavouring, sweeteners, ackee, pimento, sorrel, papaya ,sugar cane processing, food preservation, and local medicinal plants, discovering that some "traditional cures" were actually poisonous. He studied bauxite manufacture and the environmentally unsafe red mud residue from that process.Professor Magnus jointly synthesised the antibiotic called Monamycin, which was named after the Mona Campus and which he patented in Canada, Germany and the UK.

50 Select: 
Top of Page