My father, Tony Potter, who has died aged 88, greatly enjoyed his working life as a scientist, but also had a hinterland as a church singer and as a supporter of charities for blind and partially sighted people.
Born in Ilford to Jack, an art dealer and a printer, and Mildred (nee Cox), a housewife, Tony was brought up in Croydon, south London, where he spent his teenage years living through the heavy bombing of the second world war. After Selhurst grammar school he qualified in chemistry through painstaking evening study at Chelsea Polytechnic in London. He then joined the laboratory of Dr Bernard Dyer & Partners in 1953 and worked for the company as a public analyst, specialising in food safety, until his retirement in 1998.
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