Roland Victor Norris


Roland Victor Norris was a biochemist and agricultural scientist who worked in India and Sri Lanka. He served as the first agricultural chemist to the government of Madras.
He graduated from Manchester University and worked as an assistant to W.H. Perkin. He then worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London. In 1910 he worked with Professor Arthur Harden on yeast fermentation and received a D.Sc. from London University. In 1914 he took up the post of Physiological Chemist at the Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory in India. In 1918 he became the first Agricultural Chemist to the government of Madras. From 1924 to 1929 he worked as a professor of biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science working on a range of agricultural problems including soil fertility, the chemistry of shellac and the spike disease of sandalwood. He moved to Sri Lanka in 1929 where he served as director of the Tea Research Institute.
He was married to Wendy Elizabeth Marie and a daughter, Wendy Elizabeth Anne Jill, was born in Sri Lanka.

Publications

Norris' work in England was mostly on glycogen metabolism and yeast fermentation. After moving to India, he worked on a range of topics including human nutrition, soil nutrients and microbiological processes.