Ralph Reynolds’s entire career was with Kodak in what eventually came to be called Health, Safety and Environment.
Ralph was born and raised in New York City, Queens, and graduated in 1947 from Brooklyn Tech High School, which with over 5000 students offered a chemistry course. After high school he worked as a lecture assistant at CCNY for about four years.
He was drafted into the army in 1952 and went to a radar school in El Paso, TX. He was kept on as an instructor in electronics there, but eventually decided in 1954 to go back to school, MIT, and with some credits from CCNY graduated in 1957. He worked his way through as a glass worker, building glass apparatus.
After a preliminary summer job at Synthetic Chemistry, Ralph started at Kodak in the Laboratory of Industrial Medicine, which through the years and a succession of name changes has become Health, Safety and Environment. Through the years he worked on many different problems under the general heading of biochemical toxicology.
One area of investigation was metabolism of foreign substances, such as photographic developers and food additives. He also synthesized compounds containing radioactive tracers (C14) and used them in metabolic experiments with humans. One food additive was sucrose acetate isobutyate, introduced by Tennessee Eastman, as a carrier for water-insoluble food constituents.
Other studies concerned skin sensitization by color developers, the toxicology of clothing dyes, what happens on ingestion of certain polymers, and the use of cyanoacrylate “superglue” for surgical suturing. In many of these studies he worked with Bernard Astill in Rochester and with the chemists at Tennessee Eastman.
Ralph retired in 1995. He lives on Ridge Road in Greece with his wife Katherine. They have two children, a son who is an architect in Los Angeles, and a daughter who is a stay-at-home mom for their 15-year-old grandson in the Philadelphia area. Over the years they have traveled widely, usually on their own, in Africa, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. Their only travels now take them to Martha’s Vineyard, where they spend two weeks every summer with their families.
Ralph has been active in the local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as President for 10 years. He and Katherine have also been members of ACLU, Planned Parenthood and MCPEARL (Monroe Citizens for Public Education and Religious Liberty). He has a very nice shop in his basement and keeps busy with projects around home.
