Obituary of Dr. Robert M. “Rory” Cory
Dr. Robert Cory was born in Washington, D.C. on February 22, 1943. He passed away peacefully in his home in London on November 25 after a battle with multiple myeloma. Rory grew up in Lafayette, California, near San Francisco and enjoyed visiting family there on a regular basis. He received degrees from Harvey Mudd College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, obtaining a PhD in Chemistry. His passion was organic chemistry, including basic research into interesting possibilities for carbon nanotubes. After teaching positions in Colorado, Texas and Ohio, he moved to London in 1974 and eventually became a full professor at the University of Western Ontario (now Western). He was very popular with his students, and enjoyed teaching. He loved his adopted country, and after retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2003, he became an active member of the Council of Canadians, trying to make Canada a better place for future generations.
He is survived by his wife Roberta, his son Rory, his grandchildren Emily and Evan, and his three siblings Tom (Patty), Carolyn (Janos) Bognar, and James (Mary). He was predeceased by his mother Jeanne in 2003 and his father John in 1988.
[In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to the International Myeloma Foundation or The Council of Canadians.
Wortley Villager Sept. 9, 2021
Robert Mckenzie Cory, known as Rory, is a Professor Emeritis of Organic Chemistry from Western. He was popular for his 3rd level course known as “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” and for his chalk drawings in colour on the blackboard.
He received his B.S.C. from Harvey Mudd College in southern California which was unique for requiring all science and engineering students to take courses in the Humanities. Rory studied art history and African music along with a full load of hard science courses
In 2010 Rory and his wife Roberta moved into an iconic 1 ½ story 1927 bungalow on Duchess Ave. They turned the lawn into a pollinator rain garden and farm the backyard.
Rory watched “Mr. Wizard” in the 1950s and knew he would be a chemist by the age of 7. His single mother, supportive and progressive, had a natural gas line put in his bedroom so he could do experiments on his Bunsen burner. He dissolved a dime, breathed in the nitric acid, and lived to tell about it. On road trips to the groans of his three siblings, his mom stopped at every road cut so that he could look for crystals. At the age of 12 he ran a high fever and was diagnosed with polio. He spent most of the year with hot leg compresses reading a neighbour’s collection of Superman comics. He avoided an iron lung but was left with one foot two sizes smaller than the other.
Rory was a self taught chemistry prodigy. In high school he distilled Baccharis pilularis, a common aromatic California bush, to see if there were any interesting compounds. The smell in the Physics room was unpleasantly memorable. He was a natural born teacher, and his sister credits him with helping her pass Chemistry.
Over one year ago, coinciding coincidentally with the Covid 19 quaranteen, Rory was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a blood and bone cancer with no cure yet. Always intellectually curious and a consummate teacher, he published a blog, Robert Mckenzie Cory, Chemistry tidbits and other flotsam, with teaches about every element on the Periodic Table as well a compounds that at common in our everyday lives. He says he wants to combat the fear of science and the paranoia about chemistry that is too current today. Chemicals are not bad, they are what all of the earth and life are made of.
He was recently given Cisplatin and shared with the nurses that it is the oldest cancer drug, being discovered in a soluable platinum complex in 1845. One of his graduate students worked on Mitomycin another anti-cancer drug. Rory loves flowers and blogged about which he wanted to rapidly synthesize from sunflowers in hopes of finding a way to block insect attraction.
After Rory retired in 2003 he volunteered his computer skills to modernize the outreach of the London Chapter of the Council of Canadians. He and Roberta organized and/or attended almost every activist intervention in London from welcoming immigrants, demanding clean drinking water for our First Nations neighbours, funding public health care, keeping our utilities public, and supporting labour.
Rory has strong opinions. As a polio survivor his opinion on vaccines is, “By all means get one.” As a new electric car owner he is adamant that we must shift off fossil fuels now, conserve electricity, and fund new jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Because Rory and Roberta have the good fortune to live in Wortley Village, they are minutes away from Victoria Hospital, Valu Mart curbside pickup, Pharma Save, and electric vehicle charging stations. Their next door neighbor and the neighbor across the street all have electric vehicles. We live in historical houses but we care about the future.
