John Henry Soar Dickenson
John Henry Soar Dickenson (1882-1934) of Vickers
1934 Obituary [1]
JOHN HENRY S. DICKENSON died suddenly at his home in Sheffield on November 16, 1934; he was only fifty-two years of age.
Born at Ilkestone, Derbyshire, in 1882, he received his education and first studied metallurgy at Sheffield Technical School; in 1900 he was awarded the Mappin Medal and his associateship of the University of Sheffield, and was also Honours Prizeman in the City and Guilds of London examination in iron and steel manufacture.
He started his industrial career with Messrs. Beyer, Peacock & Co., Ltd., of Gorton, Manchester; subsequently, at the invitation of Mr. Douglas Vickers, of Messrs. Vickers, Ltd., he established a metallurgical research department at Vickers Works, Sheffield, which, later, became the research organisation of the English Steel Corporation, Ltd.
At the time of his death, he was chief metallurgist to the Corporation and a special director at the Vickers Works. Mr. Dickenson was a leading investigator of the phenomenon of creep and the flow of metals at high temperatures, and he had published numerous technical papers. His communications read before the Iron and Steel Institute covered so wide a range as the flow and scaling of steels at a low red heat, the distribution of silicates in steel ingots, and the influence of beryllium on steel, and as Vice-Chairman of the Institute's Committees on Corrosion and on the Heterogeneity of Steel Ingots, and as a member of the Steel Castings Research and other Committees, he was concerned with the compilation of several valuable reports; in 1915 he collaborated with three other investigators in a research carried out on behalf of the Institution of Automobile Engineers, which resulted in the standardisation of steels used in motor-car construction, and in 1916 he received that Institution's Crompton Medal in recognition of his work. Mr. Dickenson was a Past-President of the Sheffield Metallurgical Association, a member of the American Society for Steel Treating, of the American Association for Testing Materials, of the Research Council of the British Iron and Steel Federation, and of the British Standards Institution; in 1922 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
He was a very active member of the Iron and Steel Institute, which he had joined in 1903
1934/35 Obituary [2]
John Henry Soar Dickenson was born in 1882 and was educated at the Sheffield Technical School.
His practical training was obtained with the firm of Beyer, Peacock and Co., Gorton, after which he joined Vickers, Ltd., at Sheffield, in order to form a metallurgical investigation department. His work with this firm, of which he subsequently became a Director, established him as a leading authority on metallurgy, and he subsequently occupied with distinction many offices in the metallurgical world, such as President of the Sheffield Metallurgical Association, Vice-Chairman of the Corrosion Committee of The Iron and Steel Institute, etc. As a member of the Steel Research Committee of the Institution, Mr. Dickenson took a prominent part in the establishment of the ten E.S.C. Standard Automobile Steels during the War, and he was awarded the Crompton Medal in 1916.
He died on November 16th, 1934, at the age of 52.
He was elected a Member of the Institution in 1916.
1934 Obituary [3]