Jane Montgomery, research technician, and Dr. Michael E. Stoneham, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, compare spectrograms produced by the high resolution Laser-Raman Spectrophotometer in the background. The spectrograms contain a record of the machine's analyses of gases and microbes.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. Michael Evan Stoneham was born in 1933 in Portsmouth, England, to William and Irene Stoneham. His father was an electrical engineer who worked for the British Admiralty and who was, accompanied by his wife and son, posted to Hong Kong prior to the Second World War. Under threat of a Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, Stoneham and his mother were evacuated to Australia. Michael's father was captured, along with other members of the British admiralty, and ultimately died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Dr. Stoneham and his mother spent the remainder of the war in Melbourne where he attended Brighton Grammar School. After returning to England Stoneham attended the Portsmouth Grammar School followed by a six-year engineering apprenticeship with the Royal Dockyard School. He subsequently was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Durham, where he completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He initially worked for the British aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe and Company (generally known as Avro) in Manchester, England. Dr. Stoneham subsequently moved to be a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Coventry University while living in nearby Royal Leamington Spa. Dr. Stoneham undertook a sabbatical teaching post in Saskatoon in 1964 with the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. After returning to England in 1965, he joined the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). Dr. Stoneham and family immigrated to Saskatoon in 1968 where he worked as a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the U of S for 29 years, retiring in 1997. Dr. Stoneham died in Saskatoon in February 2020.