R.J. Woods was born in London, England in 1928 and by 1951 had earned a B.Sc. Honours (1949) and a Ph.D. (1951) from Imperial College, University of London. From 1951-1953, Woods worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Prairie Regional Laboratory of the National Research Council in Saskatoon. He spend the following year at the University of New Zealand before accepting his first appointment at the U of S was in 1955 as a Research Associate in Chemistry. Dr. Woods advanced through the ranks obtaining the rank of Full Professor.