Frederick M. Becket

Frederick M. Becket ( -1942)

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1942 Obituary.

Dr. FREDERICK M. BECKET died on December 1st, 1942; he was sixty-seven years of age. A native of Montreal, he studied at McGill University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1895, and at Columbia University, where he received a Master of Arts degree in 1899. In 1906 he became associated with the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation; he was formerly president of the Union Carbide and Carbon Research Laboratories, Inc., and a former vice-president of the Union Carbide Co., the Electro-Metallurgical Co., and Haynes Stellite Co., all units of the above-mentioned Corporation, to which he was a consultant at the time of his death.

For many years he was a contributor to technical publications in the chemical and metallurgical fields. Soon after the turn of the century he originated and commercialised the fundamental principle of producing low-carbon ferro-alloys and alloying metals by reducing ores in the electric furnace with silicon instead of car-bon. He was the first in America, and probably in the world, to make ferro-vanadium by silicon reduction in the electric furnace, others of his products were ferro-tungsten of commercial quahty prepared direct from the high-phosphorus domestic ores, ferro-molybdenum prepared direct from the natural sulphide, chromium and manganese metals almost free from iron, silicon metal, and, most important of all, low-carbon ferro-chromium. In 1918 he developed the electric-furnace technique of producing ferro-zirconium, then used for light armour plate and now widely employed for improving the quality of high-grade steels.

For his achievements in metallurgy he received the Perkin Medal of the Associated Chemical and Electrochemical Society in 1924, the Acheson Medal of the Electrochemical Society in 1934, the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1940 and a’ “Modern Pioneers” award of the National Association of Manufacturers in the same year. In 1929 Columbia University bestowed upon him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Sciences, and in 1934 McGill University conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws on him.

Dr. Becket was President of the Electrochemical Society m 1920, and was elected an Honorary Member in 1934; he was also President of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1933 and of the Chemists’ Club in 1939. He was a member of numerous American Societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, the American Society for Metals, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the New York Academy of Sciences. He joined The Iron and Steel Institute in 1912.

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