Arthur Willis (d.1881)
Arthur Willis (d.1881)
1881 Obituary [1]
Mr. ARTHUR WILLIS, who died at Swansea on the 22d May last, was a son of the late Professor Willis, M.A., F.R.S., of Cambridge, and was for twelve years chemist to the Landore Siemens Steel Co., in which capacity he distinguished himself in several matters of original research.
The deceased, as the first chemist of the first works established for the carrying on of the open-hearth process, had to open up a comparatively new field of investigation, acquiring knowledge and experience that he was never slow to communicate to others.
He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1877, but his only communication to the Institute was that contributed to the meeting in May 1880, on "Reactions in the Open-hearth Process."
Deceased was a distinguished student at the Royal School of Mines, where he was a pupil of Hoffman, Percy, and Smyth. One to whom he was well-known writes that "he was a most careful and exact analyst, and devised many methods by which the determination of sulphur, phosphorus, manganese, &c., was more rapidly and more accurately arrived at in pig-iron. He did not, however, publish many of his researches, as his duties in connection with the Landore Works took up all his time, and of late years his health did not allow of his doing any night work."