ABSTRACT
At its meeting on 1 March 1950 the Board of the BPI recorded ’with much gratification’ that Dr B F J Schonland had accepted the full-time appointment as Director of the Institute from the beginning of October 1950, or ’possibly a few months earlier’ [1]. However, no such early release from harness at the CSIR occurred. For all P J du Toit’s willingness and enthusiasm to step into the President’s shoes, there were still numerous matters that required the personal attention of the man who had initiated so much, and so Schonland only drew his six-year term of office to a close when he chaired his last meeting of the CSIR’s Council at the end of September.
