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Graham Gow Personal Profile


Graham Gow has recently retired after a long and intensive career within the lubricants business where he had become a grease specialist, well-recognised on a world-wide basis.


Strange how things turn out! In a complete change of direction, Graham somehow transformed from being a geologist in Scotland to become a rheologist in Sweden. Born in 1948 in Perth, Scotland, he studied at Edinburgh University, graduating as Master of Arts with first class honours in physical geography. He then went on to pursue a doctors degree in glacial geomorphology focusing on quaternary clay deposits and… landslides.


However, in 1971, in a dramatic change of events, he met Kristina from Sweden, and life was never the same again. He moved to Gothenburg in 1972, originally planning to stay for three years, but never moved back. His first job was at the British Institute teaching English to adults in evening school. However, as a favour to Kristina’s uncle, he ‘joined’ Axel Christiernsson assisting the office staff during the daytime by running errands to banks and the Post Office and with simple administrative tasks. This was a great way of learning Swedish. When management found out about his academic background, Graham was offered a position at the company’s new laboratory at their oil blending plant in Nol, just outside Gothenburg, and started to work as a development engineer for metal working fluids At that time, Axel Christiernsson represented many famous names in the lubricants world by manufacturing and distributing products into the Scandinavian market. Examples were D.A. Stuart Oil metalworking fluids, Quaker State motor oils, Aral industrial oils, Anderol synthetic compressor oils, Liqui-Moly pastes and many others. So Graham became familiar with the formulation and use of many different types of lubricants.


In 1979, Axel Christiernsson made a decision to close their grease plant in Stockholm and build a completely new facility in Nol. However, none of the current staff in Stockholm were willing to move to Nol and Graham was asked to ‘do grease’. And so, since 1980, he has been a champion of lubricating grease, slowly but surely becoming a well-known figure in the business, first in Scandinavia, then in Europe and eventually, all over the world, as far afield as the USA, India, South Africa and Australia.


Very early in his career, he realised that grease lubrication was more physics than chemistry and that grease mechanisms resembled landslides, albeit on a completely different scale.


So, with the help of Professor Leif Bohlin (founder of Bohlin Rheology), he installed a modern computer-controlled rheometer, specifically designed for measuring the viscosity, elasticity and relaxation properties of lubricating greases. This became an important tool in optimizing the flow properties of greases, especially important in a cold place like Sweden. Graham became a many-time presenter of papers at international conferences and he has been recognised on numerous occasions for his contributions to grease literature including two NLGI Author’s awards, the Clarence E. Earle Memorial Award and the P.P.C. Gonsalves Memorial Award from the NLGI India Chapter. In 1988, he became one of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the ELGI and, the following year, was elected to its first Board of Directors.


In 1997, encouraged by the company’s new ownership and a new CEO, he created the Axel Christiernsson Innovation Centre in a long-term effort to make Axel Christiernsson the global leader in lubricating greases. At the core of this work was the development of a unique polymer-thickened ‘grease’ developed in cooperation with SKF, which resulted in European patents. Other types of projects included low friction liquid crystals and water-based lubricants.


After yet another ‘change at the top’, Graham was appointed Group Business Development Manager and focused instead on opening up different geographic markets important for the company’s long-term success. He was also deeply involved in acquisition projects both within Europe and the USA and even recently in Asia and the Pacific Rim.


Graham stayed on for two extra years before finally retiring from Axel Christiernsson in 2015 and has now spent an additional year writing a book, ‘Amazing Grease’ about his 36 years in the business. This was also the subject of his ‘farewell performance’ as Keynote Speaker at the 2016 NLGI Annual Meeting where the theme was ‘Revolutions in Grease, Changing Technology for Changing Times’.


He has now left the grease business behind and is involved in his wife Kristina’s consultancy ‘Visdom Utbildning’ (Wisdom Education) as business advisor.


LINKS www.axelch.com www.visdom.se


50


LUBE MAGAZINE NO.136 DECEMBER 2016


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