Shaw was born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the fourth and youngest child of Samuel Shaw and Lydia Emma Shaw, his brothers and sisters being named Lydia Emma, Mabel and Clarence Gordon. His father was a brick manufacturer and his mother had been working as a teacher.
He started working at Boots the Chemist in 1914 as an apprentice pharmacist. After her death, in 1990, he would marry to Alice Maud on 5 June of the same year, who, in turn, would die in 1998, a year before Shaw died. He fought on the battles of Somme, Cambrai and Passchendaele, during the First World War.
In the Second World War, at the Fall of France, on June 10, 1940, he was cut off in Normandy by German tanks, and was separated from the battalion he was with.
After that, he got a bike and spent ten weeks hiding from the Nazis, while trying to reach Spain, eventually cycling 300 miles (about 480 kilometers). Near Poitiers, a French gendarme stopped him because the bicycle lacked a plaque used for annual tax, and phoned the Germans, who made him prisoner.
He was sent to Germany and spent the rest of the war in five Prisoner Of War camps, mainly at Spangenburg bei Kassel. He published several articles on pyridines, maninly in the Journal of the Chemical Society.
After his retirement in 1965, he continued giving lectures and worked as an expert witness in several court cases, such as the defense of the Angry Brigade.
A blue plaque was installed on 16 November 2012 at his home. As a part of the Periodic table of videos, Professor Martyn Poliakoff and Brady Haran filmed the event.
In 1988, the University of Nottingham created a medal in his honour called the Shaw Meda
Bachelor's Degree Shaw himself was the first recipient of this prize.
