| Abstract: | The Symposium of the Faraday Society in 1948 entitled “Physical Chemistry of Process Metallurgy” occurred at a time when the science of pyrometallurgy was just beginning an era of rapid development. This lecture discusses the growth of the subject in the ensuing 25 years showing that a profound increase in our range of understanding and of factual information has taken place. The knowledge which has been gained now provides a good general framework for the industrial application of principles and for teaching at the University level. The social and intellectual climate of the times, however, appears to be leading to a slow-down in the pursuit of fundamental knowledge, in this as in many other applied scientific fields, and the case is argued for a renewal of effort. The Extractive Metallurgy Lecture was authorized in 1959 to provide an outstanding man in the field of nonferrous metallurgy as a lecturer at the annual AIME meeting. C. B. ALCOCK is Chairman of the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science at the University of Toronto. He is a 1944 graduate of the Chemistry Department of London's Imperial College. He received his doctorate in chemical metallurgy from London University in 1955. After a short spell with the British Iron and Steel Research Association he was appointed Investigator in the Nuffield Research Group of the Royal School of Mines in 1950. Joining the academic staff of the Metallurgy Department in 1953 as a Lecturer, Dr. Alcock was a Reader in 1961 and a Professor of Metallurgical Chemistry in 1965. Dr. Alcock is a former Science Research Foundation Professor of the Carnegie Institute of Technology and of North Carolina State University. He was a Ford Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. Dr. Alcock's research interests are in high temperature chemistry of metal and ceramic systems. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (London). |
