Peter Gray

Peter Gray may refer to:

See also

Pete Gray (activist)

Peter Robert Gray (10 May 1980 in Newcastle, New South Wales – 30 April 2011) was an Australian environmental activist, notable for two landmark court cases, and for having thrown his shoes in public at former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard in protest over Australia's participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He was described in an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a pleasure-loving intellectual" driven by "an instinctive anti-authoritarianism bordering on the larrikin".

Biography

Gray obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Classics, at the University of Newcastle; and then worked as an archivist in the university library. He was simultaneously a member of the Rising Tide "climate change action group", campaigning in particular against logging and coal mining.

In 2006, he took the Government of New South Wales to the Land and Environment Court over its environmental assessment of the Anvil Hill Coal Mine. The Court found in his favour, ruling that the government had failed to properly assess the greenhouse gas pollution that would be caused by the mining and subsequent use of the coal. It was described by Greenpeace as a "landmark case [...] that forced tougher scrutiny of coal mine emissions in Australia".

Peter Gray (bioengineer)

Professor Peter Gray (born in Sydney in 1946) is a bioengineer who has played a key role in the development of modern industrial biotechnology in Australia. He was Professor and Head of Biotechnology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, from 1988 – 2003, and was the inaugural Director of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia from 2003 – 2015.

Biography

Gray completed his university studies at The University of Sydney, graduating in 1966 with a degree in chemical engineering and biosciences with honours. He completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1970, studying the dynamics of protein synthesis in yeast growing in steady state continuous cultures.

Gray undertook postdoctoral research as a Science Research Fellow at University College London (UCL) in the in the group of Professors Malcolm Lilly and Peter Dunnill. The group was receiving major funding to investigate the application of immobilised enzymes processes for industrial bioprocessing. While at UCL, Gray carried out research on a number of unit operations required for the large scale production of bioactive proteins production by bacteria, unit operations which subsequently became widely used for the production of proteins made using recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology. He then moved to the United States to work for Eli Lilly and Co, Indianapolis, Indiana, as a Senior Scientist. At Lilly’s he was responsible for developing production scale antibiotic fermentations. Lilly’s was one of the first companies to link the new knowledge of microbial genetics with bioengineering to improve the strains and bioprocesses used for antibiotic production.