HUNTSVILLE — Robert Finley McGregor, 81, of Huntsville passed away Thursday evening at Conroe Regional in Conroe.

Visitation will be Monday, March 8, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Memorial Funeral Chapel in Bryan.

Funeral Services are scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, at the funeral home. Burial will follow at Bryan City Cemetery.

Robert was born Sept. 16, 1928, in Chicago, Ill., to Ralph James and Katherine McGregor. He was a proud graduate of Joliet Township High School and Joliet Junior College.

He earned a B.S. in Chemistry and Zoology at the University of Illinois in 1948. After four years at Armor Laboratories, he went west to the University of Wyoming to earn a M.S. degree in Chemistry in 1955.

He was the State Food and Drug Chemist for two years in Laramie, Wyo.

McGregor came to Houston to Baylor University’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences for his PhD in Biochemistry in the laboratory of Dr. Darrell Ward. He married Rosemarie Rienzi. They had a son Michael and daughter Margaret.

McGregor’s career in teaching and research took him to the University of North Dakota College of Medicine before he returned to M.D. Anderson in Houston.

He spent 10 years in research at Texas A&M University and retired in 1993. He came out of retirement in 2007 to teach chemistry at Sam Houston State University. His memberships include: Sigma Xi, American Chemical Society, AAAS, and the New York Academy of Sciences.

After learning chess as a very young boy, Robert began to play in tournaments. He was state champion of Wyoming in 1954 and 1955, Texas State Amateur Champion in 1979, and several years the Senior Chess Champion of Texas. He will be missed by players he met. A published game with Bobby Fisher was drawn.

He was preceded in death by his parents, and a brother, William Charles McGregor. 

He is survived by his wife, Frances Freeman McGregor; son, Mike McGregor and wife Lucy; daughter, Margaret Allen and husband Andy; stepsons, Clark Center and James Center and wife Laura; stepdaughter, Katherine Buckley; grandchildren, Susan, Katie, and Robert McGregor, Miranda, Nicole, Brooke, and Cooper Allen, Lydia Buckley, and Charles and Clark Center.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Chemistry Department of the University of Wyoming in Memory of Dr. Robert F. McGregor.