Stanley Robson died at his home in Birchington, Kent, on 26th March, 1960, at the age of 72.
Mr. Robson was born in Sunderland, Co. Durham, and educated at Bede School. He was student at Armstrong College, now King’s College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from 1908 to 1912, gaining the B.Sc. degree in 1910. He was awarded the Frette-Marreco medal in 1911 and a Johnstone Chemical Research Scholarship which enabled him to do postgraduate work at the University of Durham and gain the degree of M.Sc. In 1912 Mr. Robson visited Canada and the U.S.A. as a travelling scholar, and on his return in 1913 came to London as a scholar of the 1851 Royal Exhibition, working on catalysis at the Imperial College of Science and Technology with Professor W. A. Bone. He also studied chemical engineering under Professor J.W. Hinchley and gained the D.I.C. in 1915.
During 1915-19 Mr. Robson worked at the Royal Naval Cordite Factory at chemist-in-charge and had a large share in the building and operating of a ‘Tentelev’ sulphuric acid plant at Holton Heath. In 1920 he joined British Dyestuffs Corporation, Ltd., as manager of their Huddersfield plant, where he introduced new methods of design and control.
When active steps were taken in 1923 to rehabilitate the zinc smelting industry in Britain, Mr. Robson was appointed works manager of the National Smelting Co. (later to become part of Imperial Smelting Corporation). He completed and brought into operation the acid and zinc smelting works at Avonmouth and Swansea and then concentrated on the use of sulphur dioxide in sinter machine gases for acid making and development of acid production from zinc blende, again with success. His later work included the development of platinum and vanadium catalysts, and of direct sintering processes; the extraction of cadmium from the fumes of blend: roasting; the early development of the production of metallic zinc by blast furnace methods and many other metallurgical and chemical processes.
From the position of general superintendent Mr. Robson was promoted to technical director of the National Smelting Co. and its subsidiaries, and supervised the control of their manufacturing operations and research, representing them as a director on the boards of metal, chemical and fertilizer companies.
Mr. Robson moved to London in 1947 to become consultant to the Zinc Corporation and the Imperial Smelting Group of Companies and held this position until 1953. He was a member of the board of Huntington, Herberlein and Co., Ltd., from 1954 to 1959, and acted in a consultant capacity to many other companies both here and overseas.
Among his many activities, Mr. Robson served as a member of government and departmental committees. These included the Minerals Development Committee, the Committee on Mineral Resources of Great Britain, the D.S.I.R. Committee on Chemical and Engineering Research and committees of the National Physical Laboratory and of the Nuffield Research Foundation, and between 1947 and 1951 he was a member of the Advisory Council on Scientific Research and Technical Development.
In 1950 Mr. Robson was made an Honorary Fellow of Imperial College for his distinguished achievements in chemical industry and in British metallurgy and for his services to past and present students of the Royal School of Mines.
He was the author of many papers in the field of chemical engineering and had frequently lectured in the subject. In 1929 Mr. Robson wrote a paper ‘The contact process for the manufacture of sulphuric acid from blende roaster gas’ for the Empire Mining and Metallurgical Congress held in Canada, and he also contributed a paper entitled ‘Refining of zinc’ to the Symposium on the Refining of Non-Ferrous Metals held by the Institution in 1949. His Presidential Address to the Institution, ‘Mainly metallurgical’, is published in the Transactions (vol.64, 1954-55).
Mr. Robson joined the Institution as a Member in 1929. He served on the Council continuously from 1947, and held office as Vice-President from 1951 to 1955 and was President for the Session 1955-56. He remained on the Council as a Past-President until his death.
Mr. Robson was a distinguished member of many other technical and learned societies; among them the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, the Institute of Metals, the Institute of Chemistry and the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He was President of the Society of Chemical Industry from 1949 to 1951 and of the Institution of Chemical Engineers for 1952 and 1953. He served as Hon. Secretary of the Royal Institution from 1953 until ill-health caused him to resign in 1959.
Mr. W.A.C. Newman writes: During nearly forty years’ friendship with Stanley Robson one cannot but have been impressed increasingly by his skill and imagination, by his inventiveness and originality and by the vast range of his outlook, particularly on technical matters. The two main fields in which he made major contributions were the manufacture of sulphuric acid and the production of zinc. In the latter, apart from routine improvements in technique, he will perhaps best be remembered for his work on the purification of zinc by reflux distillation, on the adaptation of the vertical retort process for the production of primary zinc, on the pioneer work in connexion with the blast-furnace treatment of blende and on the recovery of cadmium.
In Institution affairs, especially during his Presidency, he was called upon to direct the Council’s activities during some anxious times. He carried out these tasks, following his own intimate consideration of them, with dignity and fairness and he was always willing to listen quietly and with deep interest to the views of others before coming to a final decision.
He played a great part in assisting the Nuffield Foundation, from 1945 to 1950, in selecting men to whom grants and scholarships could be given to enable them to travel and enlarge their experiences in extraction metallurgy. Similarly he helped, and was actually the Chairman of the Committee set up jointly by the Institution and the Institute of Metals to make recommendations for the distribution of funds provided by Capper Pass and Son for similar purposes.
Stanley was a very devout and religious man with high ideals of behaviour, but he never allowed his views to obtrude on the lives or opinions of others. He was always sincere, dignified and very friendly. He felt it intensely when, some few years before his death, he realised that the hard work during many years had tapped his strength physically and mentally and that the concentration which had been such a feature of his life was very gradually fading.
Vol. 69, Trans I.M.M., 1959-60, pp.609-611
