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Robert Simpson Silver CBE, MA, Ph.D, D.Sc., D.Tech, F.I.Mech.E, F.Inst.P, FRSE (1913–1997) was a Scottish physicist, mechanical engineer and academic, awarded the Unesco Prize for Science in 1968 for his discovery of a process for the demineralisation of sea water. His invention of the Multistage Flash (MSF) Distillation System to desalinate seawater was instrumental in enabling many arid countries in the Middle East to have adequate water supplies.

Biography
Ensure that the following sections are organized by year. For instance, the section Marriage and children might be presented before or after the Expanded descriptions, and vice versa.

Early life
Silver was born in Montrose, where his family had a laundry business, and educated at Montrose Academy. He went to the University of Glasgow where he studied Natural Philosophy and graduated MA in 1932 and, two years later, BSc with First Class Honours, he received a PhD for studies in gaseous combustion in 1938 and was awarded a DSc in 1945 for further research whilst in industry.

Expanded description
Desalination - Prior to his work there had been no commercially viable desalination process that involved continuous flow; plants had to be stopped and emptied of accumulated salt from time to time, such as when a passenger liner using desalination was in port. Silver performed a thermodynamic analysis (now known as "Second Law Analysis") showing that reverse osmosis and multistage flash were the optimal processes. As reverse osmosis technology was inadequate in the mid-20th century he designed multistage flash equipment, of which the first large-scale installation was in Kuwait.

paraphrase: He was passionate about Scottish language and literature not only of the Doric tradition of the North East, but also of Gaelic. He was a poet and a playwright. His play The Bruce was published by the Saltire Society in 1986 subsequently broadcast by the BBC Radio and put on at the Edinburgh Festival. A one-act play The Picture was put on in London and is still popular with many amateur companies. A collection of his poems Conflict and Context has been published by Chapman magazine. He was a prodigious writer to the newspapers and his thoughts on a wide range of topics could be seen regularly appearing in the letter columns of Scotland's national press

Philosophical and/or political views
Silver was an ardent Scottish Nationalist standing for the SNP as a candidate in the 1979 election in the Craigton constituency of Glasgow in the 1979 General Election

Published works
An Introduction to Thermodynamics: with Some New Derivations Based on Real Irreversible Processes. Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Steam Plant Aspects of Sea Water Distillation Paperback – 1 July 1978

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

 * 1967 CBE
 * 1968 Unesco Prize for Science
 * 1984 Awarded an honoray D.Sc. from the University of Strathclyde