Horace Wadsworth Gillett
Horace Wadsworth Gillett (1883-1950)
1949/50 Obituary [1]
HORACE WADSWORTH GILLETT. Dr. H. W. Gillett, former director of Battelle Memorial Institute, died from a heart attack on 3 March 1950 near Nicholasville, Ky., while on his way home from a hunting trip in Florida and Georgia.
Horace Wadsworth Gillett was born in Steuben County, N.Y., on 12 December 1883 and attended Cornell University, receiving his A.B. degree in chemistry in 1906. After graduation, he taught physical and electro-chemistry at Cornell while working for his doctorate degree. During summer vacations, he worked as a chemist with Thomas A. Edison and with Arthur D. Little, Inc.
He was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1910, and in the same year was made manager of the research department of the Aluminum Castings Company, Detroit. In 1912 he became associated with the U.S. Bureau of Mines as an alloy chemist, and later became chief alloy chemist in charge of the field station in Ithaca, N.Y. Twelve years later he succeeded George K. Burgess as chief of the Division of Metallurgy, U.S. Bureau of Standards.
By 1929 Dr. Gillett had become recognized as one of the outstanding metallurgists in the United States, and was chosen by the board of trustees of the Battelle endowment to direct the newly founded Battelle Memorial Institute. He selected the staff of scientists and initiated the plan of operation which was responsible for the development of Battelle into the largest endowed research foundation in the United States.
In the same year he accepted the responsibility of the editorial direction of the monthly magazine Metals and Alloys (now Materials and Methods), publication of which was then just beginning.
A scientist rather than an administrator by inclination, Dr. Gillett resigned from his directorship of Battelle in 1934, and from then until early in 1949, he acted as chief technical advisor, in which position he was responsible for the technical guidance of the Institute's research. As chief technical executive, he passed every technical report and research paper that left the Institute, and it is generally conceded that the success Battelle has obtained results largely from the high standard of technical excellence upon which he insisted. At the time of his death Dr. Gillett was serving as technical consultant to Battelle.
In addition to his Battelle duties, Dr. Gillett found tune for extensive writing (he was a master of the "correlated abstract") and participation m the research activities of professional societies. He was a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Society for Metals, the American Society for Testing Materials, the American Foundrymen's Society, the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, the Iron and Steel Institute, and the Institute of Metals, which he joined in 1910. His professional honours included: McFadden Gold Medallist (American Foundrymen's Association), Henry Marion Howe Memorial Lecturer (American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers), and Edward Williams Lecturer (Institute of British Foundrymen). He served on several committees of the American Society for Testing Materials. During the recent war, Dr. Gillett served on the Advisory Committee on Metals and Minerals to the U.S. War Production Board and as a member of the Research Division of the War Metallurgy Committee. Outside his professional field, Dr. Gillett was known throughout the United States as a keen sportsman and dog lover. He was affiliated with the Columbus Bird Dog Club and was interested in hunting, fishing, sailing, and skeet shooting.