Henry Cort Harold Carpenter

Sir Henry Cort Harold Carpenter FRS (6 February 1875 – 13 September 1940) was a British metallurgist and specialist on steels. He made pioneering studies on the crystallization of metals and the study of their properties.

Carpenter was born in Clifton, Bristol to William Lant Carpenter and Annie Grace Viret. His ancestors included William Benjamin Carpenter and the metallurgist Henry Cort. After the death of his father, he was taken care of by his uncle Joseph Estlin Carpenter. He studied at St. Paul's School and then at Eastbourne College. He studied chemistry at Merton College, Oxford, graduating in 1896 and then went to study organic chemistry in Leipzig, gaining a Ph.D there. He returned to assist W.H. Perkin at Owens College, Manchester.

In 1902 he joined the National Physical Laboratory and worked on chemical and metallurgical problems. Along with B.F.E. Keeling he worked on steel alloys. In 1906 he was head of metallurgy at Victoria University, Manchester. In 1914 he joined the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, South Kensington as Professor of Metallurgy. He was President of the Iron and Steel Institute (1935–1937) and the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy.[1][2]

Carpenter was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918 [3] and knighted in the 1929 Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal in 1931 by the Iron and Steel Institute.[4]

He married Ethel Mary Lomas in 1905. He was found dead from drowning in a stream after suffering a heart attack while out walking alone in the Clyne valley, Swansea.[5]

  1. ^ Desch, C. H. (1940). "Sir Harold Carpenter, F.R.S". Nature. 146 (3702): 483–484. Bibcode:1940Natur.146..483D. doi:10.1038/146483a0. S2CID 4114987.
  2. ^ Edwards, C. A. (1941). "Henry Cort Harold Carpenter, 1875-1940". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 3 (10): 611–625. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1941.0025. JSTOR 769170. S2CID 176375607.
  3. ^ "Fellow details". Royal Society. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
  4. ^ "Awards archive". IOM3. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
  5. ^ Desch, C. H. (revised Anita McConnell) (2004). "Carpenter, Sir (Henry Cort) Harold". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32302. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)