Born: 2 July, 1962, in Edinburgh.
Died: 1 July, 2008, in Edinburgh, aged 45. JULIAN Coutts trod the path from a brilliant academic life to high finance, for many a fraught and difficult journey, faultlessly to reach the very
upper echelons of Standard Life Investments, the Edinburgh-based fund management giant, where he was chief scientific officer.
Educated at Edinburgh Academy, a winner of the Salvesen Scholarship, he was one of the brightest minds of his generation, following the footsteps of arguably the school's greatest ever pupil, James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish scientist whose work paved the way for Einstein's theory of relativity, into the realms of physics.
The son of an Edinburgh advocate, he won an Exhibition and two further scholarships to gain a place at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, where he graduated with a first-class degree before taking up a doctorate examining the theoretical physics behind high energy lasers. His professor, Colin Webb, recalled later that Coutts was one of his brightest and best research students, included in authorship of several important scientific papers while still an undergraduate. The validity of his work has been established repeatedly by subsequent practical experiments and he continues to be regularly cited as an authority in the field.
Awarded the Lindemann Fellowship, a substantial and fiercely sought after travelling scholarship, Coutts was able to cross the Atlantic to research astrophysics at the University of Colorado before returning to Britain to take up a fellowship at Queen's College, back in Oxford.
It was during his time in the United States that he became engaged to Jenny, a bright young chemist he had first met through his sister Charlotte, a lawyer who is now a sheriff presiding over courts across Scotland. With a devotion to Jenny that never abated, he wrote to her every day during the two years he spent overseas, returning to Britain permanently so that they could marry.
Embracing the responsibilities of marriage, Coutts took the hard decision to leave a life of academic research to take up a post in industry. His technical brilliance and enormous enthusiasm helped deliver his new employer, the exploration arm of BP, the best aeromagnetic survey system in the world. He became a leading expert in this field within 12 months but it was a measure of his intellect that, once he had developed this mastery, he moved on to test himself in other areas.
Joining London merchant bank Morgan Grenfell, initially as a fund manager, he pioneered techniques for visualising and analysing investment risk before he was headhunted by Standard Life Investments, where, save for one short period, he remained, graduating from investment risk director to chief scientific officer while also finding time to achieve an MBA from Warwick University. From the day he started, his colleagues realised the company had recruited a truly unique individual. One, James Aird, remembered: "He was so clever when we hired him, we had to get a consultant in to interview him – just to check out he wasn't bluffing."
A deeply modest and ever generous man, Coutts never sought to overplay his intellect. Friends at Standard Life Investments remember him as a person who treated everyone as his equal without a trace of conceit, arrogance or superiority. The company's chief executive, Keith Skeoch, said: "Julian was simply one of the brightest and nicest people it has been my privilege to meet during my 50 years on this planet. His infectious enthusiasm for dealing with difficult technical or mathematical problems was matched by his ability to communicate complex issues in a down to earth manner to everyone. Many of us will remember his explanation of some of the issues surrounding investment risk by using "follow the wire" apparatus – a favourite at school fetes. For all his intellectual firepower, Julian will be remembered for his sense of fun."
Coutts enjoyed life to the full – he was an accomplished musician, composer, song-writer, amateur dramatist and lover of company, frequently delivering the Immortal Memory or one of the toasts at the Standard Life Burns Supper – but he was also deeply spiritual with a strong, life-long belief in family. Moving back to Scotland in 1997, Coutts and his wife chose the popular suburb of Trinity to bring up their daughters, Zoe and Imogen, and the family became immersed in the local Church of Scotland parish, Wardie, where he became an elder and youth group leader.
Two years ago, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, which, though extremely painful and discomforting, he bore without complaint and with great dignity.
Julian Coutts is survived by his wife, Jenny, a teacher who heads the chemistry department at Edinburgh Academy, his daughters, Zoe and Imogen, his mother and father, Gordon and Winifred, and his sister, Charlotte.
The full article contains 799 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
