Richard J. Smythe attended Brock University in its initial years of operation in southern Ontario and graduated with a four year honours degree in chemistry with minors in mathematics and physics prior to attending the University of Waterloo for a master's degree in analytical chemistry and computing science and a doctorate in analytical chemistry. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the State University of New York at Buffalo in electro-analytical chemistry Richard went into business in 1974 as Peninsula Chemical Analysis Ltd. Introduced in 1966 to time-shared computing with paper tapes, punched cards, BASIC prior to Fortran IV at Waterloo, the PDP 11 mini-computers and finally the PC, Richard has maintained a currency in physical computing using several computer languages and scripting codes. Professionally Richard has functioned as a commercial laboratory owner and is currently a consulting analytical chemist, a civil forensic scientist as PCA Ltd., a full partner in Walters Forensic Engineering in Toronto, Ontario and senior scientist for Contrast Engineering in Halifax Nova Scotia. A large portion of Richard's professional career consists of devising methods by which a problem that ultimately involves making one or more fundamental measurements can be solved by using the equipment at hand or using a readily available "off-the shelf/ out of the box" facility to provide the data required.