Dr Graham Rideal graduated from Lancaster University and joined ICI where, after 15 years, he became the company consultant in particle size analysis. He is the author of several patents describing the construction of inorganic materials such as foams, films and coatings from nano-sized mineral particles and has published over 30 technical papers. After a period with the BSI advising on test sieve specification, Dr Rideal was invited onto the Bureau of Certified Reference (BCR) panel in Brussels to help develop a new international range of reference standards for particle size analysis. He was the founder of Whitehouse Scientific in 1983, a company specializing in particle size standards. Dr Rideal developed an award winning method of calibrating test sieves using glass microspheres, a technology that has recently been very successfully extended to cover filter media.