A SCIENTIST from the North-East who played a part in the first moon landings has had his life's work recognised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

Jim Hambleton, from Ebchester, County Durham, is 80 years old but still works full-time running his businesses, Sycopel Scientific and Fairgrieve Mouldings, in Washington.

He currently produces amplifiers that are used for chemical studies to test batteries and fuel cells.

Over the past half-century, his work has included developing protein analysers for the blood and optical systems for X-raying DNA as well as mapping the moon for NASA.

Mr Hambleton said: "I was really proud to get the RSC award because it is from the top professors in the country.

"This is the culmination of my life's work but I am still ready to work and am already taking on another patent."

The son of a pitman from Consett, he left school at 14 and went to work at the steelworks before joining the RAF in 1943.

After the war, Mr Hambleton was promoted to technical director, fixing ship's instruments.

During the 1950s, he worked on reducing the interference from radar on television signals and a decade later went to Hollywood to advise Technicolor on colour processing.

Mr Hambleton and his team were used by NASA to map the moon for the first landings in 1969 and detected the location of the lost spacecraft Surveyor 1.

He founded his own company in the 1970s and later started another two companies - one making components for the aerospace industry, the other manufacturing instruments for the electro-chemical industry.

Despite a number of health scares, including a quadruple heart bypass operation, Mr Hambleton still works tirelessly.

He said: "It is the challenge and it is the most marvellous experience in the world to work on a project when it is successful."