Henry Cort Harold Carpenter died in tragic circumstances on September 14th, 1940, at the age of 65. He had been at the Swansea University College since the early days of the war, and on the occasion of his death had gone for his favourite walk, alone, in the Clyne Valley, near Swansea. As he failed to return, a search party was instituted, who found him lying drowned in a stream, and the presumption was that as a consequence of a heart attack, to which the medical evidence showed he was liable, he fell into the water without the power to save himself.
He was the great-great-grandson of Henry Cort, who invented the puddling process for the manufacture of wrought iron and introduced the use of grooved rolls for metal rolling. He was educated, at St. Paul’s School and at Eastbourne College, and went to Oxford as a scholar of Merton College. He gained a first class in Natural Science Honours schools, and later obtained the M.A. degree of the University of Oxford and the Ph.D. degree of Leipzig University. From 1898 to 1901 he was a research Fellow and demonstrator at Owens College, Manchester. From 1901 to 1906 he was head of the chemical and metallurgical departments at the newly-founded National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, under Sir Richard Glazebrook. Leaving that position in 1906, he was Professor of Metallurgy at Manchester University until 1914, when he was appointed to the Professorship of Metallurgy at the Royal School of Mines, which he held until his untimely decease.
During the course of his brilliant career he received many distinctions. In 1905 he was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Gold Medal for research by the Iron and Steel Institute, and in 1927 delivered the James Forrest Lecture before the Institution of Civil Engineers, two years later receiving the Thomas Turner Gold Medal. Two years later still he was awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal by the Iron and Steel Institute, and in 1932 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in recognition of his services in the advancement of metallurgical science and technology. In 1938 he was elected an honorary member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, and in 1939 he was the second recipient of the Platinum Medal of the Institute of Metals. From 1918 to 1920 he was president of the Institute of Metals, and from 1926 to 1934 he was honorary treasurer of the Iron and Steel Institute, relinquishing that office to occupy the Presidential Chair from 1935 to 1937. In 1918 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was also an honorary Associate of the Royal School of Mines, an honorary D.Sc. of the University of Wales, and an honorary D.Met. of the University of Sheffield.
He was created a Knight in 1929.
He was at one time a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and at the time of his death was chairman of the Metallurgy Research Board of that Department. His contributions to the proceedings of scientific societies were numerous and included two (written conjointly with Mr. S. Tamura and Dr. M.S. Fisher respectively) which appeared in the Transactions (Vols. xxxvii and xxxix). Quite recently he collaborated with Dr. J.M. Robertson m the production of an important two-volume treatise on ‘Metals.’
Sir Harold Carpenter was elected a Member of the Institution in 1913, and a Member of the Council in 1919. He held the office of Vice-President for two periods, 1919-21 and 1929-32, and occupied the Presidential Chair in 1934-35.
Vol. 50, Trans I.M.M. 1940-41, pp. 542-3
