William Arthur Bone
William Arthur Bone (1871-1938) was a British fuel technologist and chemist. Professor of Chemical Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Fellow of the Royal Society. [1]
1871 March 19th. Born in Stockton-on-Tees, the son of Christopher Bone, a tea merchant, and his wife Mary Elizabeth. He was educated at Middlesbrough High School, the Ackworth Quaker school and Stockton High School. After a year at the Leys School, Cambridge he studied Chemistry and Physics at Owens College, Manchester (now the University of Manchester), followed by a scholarship year at the University of Heidelberg.
Bone was married twice: firstly in 1896 to Kate Hind, daughter of the Mayor of Stockton, with whom he had a son and two daughters before her death in 1914 and secondly in 1916 to Mabel Isabel Liddeard, who died in 1922.
After a period as Lecturer in Chemistry and Metallurgy at Manchester where he studied hydrocarbon combustion, Bone was appointed Livesey Professor of Coal Gas and Fuel Industries at the University of Leeds in 1906. There he set up a new Department of Fuel Technology and continued to study the mechanics of fuel combustion. In 1912 he made his last move, this time to the Department of Chemical Technology at Imperial College, London, again concentrating on the investigation of combustion. During World War I (1914–18) he carried out research on fuel problems associated with the war and trained chemists for duties in munition factories. He retired in 1936.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1905. He delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1932 (on hydrocarbon combustion) and was awarded their Davy Medal in 1936 "For his pioneer work on contact catalysis and his researches on the mechanism of combustion of hydrocarbons and on the nature of flames and on gaseous explosions".
Research Director, The Bone Research and Development Association, Ltd., Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, S.W.7. Private address: Montrose, Harpenden Road, St. Albans.
1938 June 11th. Died
1938 Obituary [2]
"Fuel and combustion engineers throughout the world will learn with deep regret on Saturday, June 11th followgin an operation, of Professor William Arthur Bone, who for many years was the chief Professor and the Head of the Department of Chemical Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology at South Kensington. Professor Bone, who was in his sixty-eighth year, was born in Stockton-on-Tees, and received his education at the Friend's School, Ackworth, the Middlesborough High School, the Stockton Grammar School, and the Ley's School, Cambridge.
In 1891 he graduated in Chemistry at the Victoria University, and gained the Mercer Scholarship, and the Le Blanc Medal in Metallurgy.... Read more