Education
King attended Highgate School, studied chemistry at London"s Royal College of Science and the University of Munich, then taught and carried out some important research at Imperial College, London.
King attended Highgate School, studied chemistry at London"s Royal College of Science and the University of Munich, then taught and carried out some important research at Imperial College, London.
At the time of the Club of Rome"s founding, King was a "top international scientific civil servant, Scots by birth, living in Paris."
In 1940, Henry Tizard invited King to join the Ministry of Production as Deputy Scientific Adviser. While there he would learn from an intercepted letter the properties of the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, coining the acronym DDT. He travelled to the United States. in 1943, becoming Head of the United Kingdom Scientific Mission and Scientific Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington. Following the war he became Secretary of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy and personal adviser to the Lord President of the Council, Herbert Morrison.
He later became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
In 1957 he joined the European Productivity Agency in Paris, where he remained until 1974.