Joost Jacob ‘Beer’ Jiskoot, who founded a company in Tunbridge Wells which plays a leading role in the oil industry, has died aged 92.
As a systems engineer and designer, he focused on producing specialist industrial blending and sampling equipment.
Jiskoot Quality Systems and parent company Cameron are now the leading providers of this technology for the oil and gas industry.
And Mr Jiskoot’s sampling systems are used today to value more than 60 per cent of the world’s crude oil.
The son of a Dutch architect, he was born in Indonesia in 1923 and went to the Netherlands with his mother, an opera singer, as a child.
His father would later be held as a prisoner of war on the island by the Japanese.
During World War Two he was repeatedly rounded up by the Nazi razzias, once spending six weeks in prison and escaping captivity several times.
He came to England in 1945 to join a newly established section of Dutch Army whose task was to quell independence movements in liberated Indonesia.
Before leaving, he met his future wife Barbara and they were married within three weeks. Then they were immediately separated for two years while he ran a field hospital in the Dutch East Indies.
The family moved down from London to Edenbridge in 1958, then opened a small manufacturing base on Goods Station Road in Tunbridge Wells three years later.
His sampling development saw him become a Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum and he expanded the business to Holland, France and Italy.
In 2004 he sold the company to this children, daughter Johanna and sons Robert, Patrick and Mark, and retired, becoming the main carer for Barbara.
A funeral was held on Monday June 27 at St Peter and St Paul Church, Edenbridge.
