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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 6 (September 1, 1938)

Dr. J. W. Mellor, F.R.S. — A World Chemist and Humorist from Otago University

page 9

Dr. J. W. Mellor, F.R.S.
A World Chemist and Humorist from Otago University

Dr. J. W. Mellor, F.R.S., 1934.

Dr. J. W. Mellor, F.R.S., 1934.

There are a few elderly and older people throughout the English-speaking world who are free to maintain against all-comers the hypothesis, startling as it may be to the self-satisfied class under forty, that the world reached its highest point of excellence in all that pertains to the creative, or knowing faculties of man during that period that they lovingly refer to as “The Nineties.” Certainly it was during the decades that centre round the beginning of this century that the University of New Zealand conferred its degrees upon those few New Zealand students who lived to occupy commanding places in world-wide fields of learning.

A few months ago in the “Railways Magazine” the passing of the world's greatest physicist was fittingly commemorated by Dr. Marsden when Lord Rutherford passed away. In this article is commemorated the life and death of the world's greatest chemist, Dr. J. W. Mellor. These two leaders in the allied world army of science were both ever eager to acknowledge their debt to the same Alma Mater of Learning—the University of New Zealand. Though they graduated from different colleges—Rutherford from Canterbury and Mellor from Dune-din—they attended lectures during virtually the same years, carried out the most brilliant work of their careers during much the same period at towns far away indeed from their Dominion homes but so close together as Manchester and the “Five Towns” of Staffordshire, and they finally died within a few months of each other in London. The work and status of Rutherford in Physics is known to all New Zealanders, but that of Mellor in the wider field of Chemistry is not less outstanding and definite, and not less worthy of affectionate pride from all New Zealanders. Although the boy Mellor was already ten years old when he arrived in New Zealand, all his schooling was obtained here; and when he left for England in 1899 at the age of thirty all the formative influences of his outstanding life-work were already behind him and his future greatness seemed assured to his teachers and associates.

He has left the world an enduring monument in his magnificent “Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretic Chemistry,” a huge work (in 16 volumes) which, taking as it does, the whole world of Inorganic Chemistry as its province, yet surveys the vast field so thoroughly and with such detail that it would seem there remains no further word to be said. But a more spectacular proof of his greatness came during the Great War. The steel industry was suddenly confronted with a situation that threatened the life of the Nation when Continental supplies of refractory materials and of many necessary steel alloys were cut off. Dr. Mellor offered his services to the authorities and so prompt and successful were the results of his research that the industry was enabled to meet the stupendous demands of the war almost without intermission or delay. I am unable at present to check the source of the quotation, but some well-known English technical magazine declared that while it was, of course, incorrect to claim that any one man such as Foch, Clemenceau or Lloyd George had won the war, the claim could most nearly be advanced for Mellor. It is known privately that he was offered, or at least approached concerning the offer of, a peerage; but his innate modesty and simplicity and the moderate wealth, or poverty, he enjoyed, alike prevented his acceptance of the honour. In conversation he explained the reluctance by saying that since his health prevented his “doing his bit” in the trenches, his scientific labours should be given freely as his contribution to the service of his country.

Huxley said that “Science and Literature are not two things but two sides of one thing.” This fact is well illustrated by Mellor. He was deeply read in English literature, even in the most technical portions of his mathematical and chemical work his use of language was clear, forcible, and, at times eloquent, while in “Uncle Joe's Nonsense” book he reveals himself as a cartoonist of striking ability and a creator of delightful humour and most amusing conceits.

* * *

The Home in Kaikorai Valley.

His father was Job Mellor, a loom-tuner in the Yorkshire woollen mills. He was a model of tireless patience, and never was man more appropriately named. Not well-educated by our modern standards, he was a keen reader and adaptable in all things. In later years he built his own house in Dunedin and also used to make his own page 10 clothes. He was a man with strong Liberal and Labour leanings and preeminently fitted for a Colonial life. His wife Emma was also a Yorkshire woman, frugal, tidy, and a born home-maker.

Joseph William Mellor was born in Lindley, a suburb of Huddersfield, in 1869. The reproduced portrait of the family group—the children comprised four girls and two boys as may be seen—shows a handsome and dignified couple, who cannot fail to impress by their appearance of intelligence and sterling worth. The family arrived in Lyttelton in 1879 and spent two years in Kaiapoi, where the father worked in the woollen mills and the children went to school. In 1881 they all went south to Dunedin, the magnet being, of course, the woollen mills in the Kaikorai Valley. Here the father built the house referred to above and the family settled down. Joseph went to the Linden School (by the way, did you know that part of the Kaikorai Valley was then known as Linden and that

“On Linden when the sun was low
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,”

still raises familiar echoes in scholars of that school?) There he was looked on as an ordinary industrious schoolboy of no outstanding merit. Leaving school in December, 1882, he started work as a handy boy in the employ of H. S. Fish, the prominent citizen, mayor and Member of Parliament, whose vituperative speeches prompted the famous epigram of the 'nineties, “While in England we get our fish from Billingsgate, in the Antipodes we get our Billingsgate from Fish.”

Joseph then progressed through Simon Bros.'s boot shop to McKinley's boot factory, and finally to the boot factory of Sargood & Sons, where he worked for some years.

The wind of Learning bloweth where it listeth, but the forebears and early life of Mellor bear close resemblance to those of Rutherford, his peer. Young Rutherford was the more brilliant, but Mellor the keener after knowledge. Only a few months ago the only chord of memory evoked by the mention of Mellor's name in the breast of a certain Dunedinite who was Mellor's foreman in Sargood's factory was that of a quiet studious boot-clicker, pondering over mysterious books in lunch hours and every spare minute while the factry drone was still.

For, as Mellor himself confided recently to his old schoolmate, life-long friend and brother-in-law, Mr. Arthur Ellis of Dunedin, he was a youth in his early teens when he first conceived his life-long determination—impossible of fruition as it might then appear—to become the foremost chemist of his generation. This ambitio seems to owe nothing to any external influence, although it is remembered that his father was always very interested in anything pertaining to that science.

It was a long walk in those mornings over the Roslyn hill to Sargood's factory, and a longer walk back in the evening, but every night was spent at the beloved studies. A “laboratory” was built in the garden of the home, not a pretentious building, only a 6 ft. by 6 ft. shed of corrugated iron, fitted with such meagre apparatus and books as his modest savings could compass. While the evening meal was in progress it was his mother's task—nay, the word “task” ill describes the work of love, since the studies of young Joe were already the pride and hope of the parents—to heat a brick in the kitchen oven, and immediately the meal was over the indefatigable student withdrew to the “tin-shed” for the evening, where he experimented and read by the light of the small kerosene lamp of yore and comforted by the hot brick enclosed in flannel.

It is interesting to learn that the “tin-shed” was still in existence a few years ago and that much of Mellor's modest apparatus was still housed there.

A further proof of his industry is revealed by the fact that, as the young scientist was too poor to buy the books he needed, he obtained a loan of many of them from various sources and laboriously copied the contents out in longhand.

There was of course little time for sport or other relaxation for one who lived such laborious days and studious nights but, as the outcome of the joint suggestion and co-operation of Mr. Arthur Ellis, he was introduced to chess in 1885 and became an outstanding player. For some years he acted as chess Editor for the Dunedin “Evening Star,” and was once or twice in the final heat of the New Zealand Chess Championship. I apologise for the word “heat” in such context, but was delighted to learn that in his maturer years in Staffordshire and London the only sport that could delay the completion of his monumental “Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry” was a game of penny poker or the more erudite solo whist.

Otago University.

His studies attracted the attention of the late Mr. G. M. Thomson, Science Master at the Otago Boys' High School, and father of Dr. Allan Thomson, the first New Zealand Rhodes Scholar. Mellor attended classes at the Technical School, of which G.M. was a Director and from there matriculated in 1892. By this time he had shown aptitude for mathematics also, and Mr. Thomson recognised a coming “genius” and arranged a bursary or scholarship to the University. He also assisted the arrangement with Sargood's whereby Mellor was permitted the necessary time off to attend lectures. I well remember the enthusiasm of Mr. Thomson after Mellor's fine work, “Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics” (to which students of mathematics could well have been added), was published in 1902, and his
The Mellor family group, showing J. W. Mellor, the world scientist to be, in the background.

The Mellor family group, showing J. W. Mellor, the world scientist to be, in the background.

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J. W. Mellor in his B.Sc. grown, 1897.

J. W. Mellor in his B.Sc. grown, 1897.

loud entreaties to watch Mellor—“he's the coming man.” Like a modern Ulysses Thomson had, in the words of Tennyson, “drunk delight of battle with my peers” and wanted us also to “touch the Happy Isles And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.”

The Professor of Chemistry at Otago in those days was the veteran Professor Black, a fine scholar of the olden type and a generous enthusiast, who was delighted when he recognised, after a few years, that Mellor had outstripped him in his own field. When the time came for Black to retire, it was suggested by friends in Dunedin that Mellor, then at Owens College, Manchester, should be brought back to succeed Black. But “No, no,” the old man protested, “he would be wasted here.” Certainly the war would have been harder to win if Mellor had returned to Dunedin!

In 1897 Mellor won the Senior Scholarship in Chemistry from Otago University, in 1898 he gained first-class honours in Chemistry, and in 1899 was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship in Chemistry.

It is interesting to remember that Rutherford won his Senior Scholarship in Mathematics at Canterbury in 1892, and was awarded the Exhibition Science Scholarship in Electricity in 1894, while J. A. Erskine, probably the greatest genius of the three, took the Senior Scholarship in Physical Science in 1893, and was awarded the Exhibition Science Scholarship in Electricity in 1896, also from Canterbury College. Verily, there were giants in those days!

His University career finished so brilliantly, Mellor taught at Lincoln Agricultural College for a few months until the benefits of the Exhibition Scholarship could be utilised. Here in his 30th year he married Miss Emma Bakes, a young lady from Lincolnshire who had been brought up in Auckland. His training finished, his happiness assured and brilliant prospects unfolding, Mellor and his wife sailed from Port Chalmers in August, 1899, to take up his Research Scholarship at Owens College, Manchester, under Professor H. B. Dixon.

The “Five Towns.”

In 1902, now a Doctor of Science, Mellor was appointed Chemist to the Pottery Manufacturers' Federation and proceeded to Newcastle-under-Lyme, in the “Five Towns” where the pottery industry is centralised and concerning which Arnold Bennett was then writing those classic novels which prove him the greatest figure in literature that has yet emerged from the busy hills and valleys where the “Five Towns” cluster. This research turned out to be Mellor's life work. In 1905 he became Director of the Research Laboratories of the Federation, and until 1937 was closely engaged in chemical researches associated with the ceramic industry. An important extension of his work was originated by a conversation between Dr. Mellor and Lt.-Col. C. W. Thomas which was followed by a conference at the North Staffordshire Hotel on January 4th, 1909, of those interested in refractories. The Institution of Gas Engineers was the first to take advantage of the research facilities of the Pottery Federation, but co-operation gradually increased until on April 4th, 1920, the British Refractories Research Association was formally constituted. This Association was directed by four joint committees representing respectively the Pottery Manufacturers' Association, the Institution of Gas Engineers, and the Blast Furnace and Open Hearth sections of the British Iron and Steel Federation. The allied researches were conducted in the laboratories of the Pottery Federation for some years but on December 5th, 1934, the magnificent new laboratories were opened at Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent. Dr. Mellor was appointed the first Director being, as “The Engineer” observed, the “only man for the position,” and the laboratories were called the “Mellor Laboratories of the British Refractories Research Association,” “in grateful recognition by the Council of his long and distinguished service to the ceramic industry.” A far cry from the “tin-shed” in Kaikorai Valley with its primitive comforts and facilities! There Dr. Mellor continued in harness till 1937, when continued ill-health enforced his retirement, and he migrated to Highlands Heath, Portsmouth Road, London, where he died on May 24th, 1938.

During these years Dr. Mellor was a busy member of the Ceramic Society, for the most time being Secretary or President. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and on his retirement was granted a C.B.E., a somewhat barren honour for so great a man.

All this history would seem to stamp Mellor as only a dry, dusty chemist with relatively narrow interests, or at most as a purely academic creature. Nothing is further from the truth. He was instead a man of extraordinarily wide in
The Absent-Minded Beggar Cartoon by Dr. Mellor (after Bateman). Mellor lights his pipe in a fashionable restaurant.

The Absent-Minded Beggar
Cartoon by Dr. Mellor (after Bateman). Mellor lights his pipe in a fashionable restaurant.

page 12
A corner of Dr. Mellor's library in London, showing card indexes and pamphlets.

A corner of Dr. Mellor's library in London, showing card indexes and pamphlets.

However cramped his horizon may have been in his younger days, it became broadened and brightened to an extraordinary degree later on. His marriage undoubtedly had a lot to do with this. Mrs. Mellor was a perfect helpmate. Their home life was very happy, but more than that she provided the quiet, equable, well-ordered menage that kept Mellor clear of anxieties and freed him for his omnivorous reading and constant study. Although Mellor was in a position to multiply his income by doing outside consulting work, he had no financial ambitions and did not take advantage of any of these chances. This does not mean that he was not constantly engaged in doing such work, but he looked on his knowledge as something that should, as far as possible, be given as a gift to those desiring to benefit from it. He was free and unmethodical in money matters, and it was a happy chance that Mrs. Mellor —“The Boss” as her husband loved to call her—had the financial sense and method that he lacked. Further, Mellor was, particularly during his earlier years in England, radical in his political and social ideas and impatient of those social distinctions and observances that were then such a feature of English life. Mrs. Mellor had at once the tact necessary to cover her husband's neglects in this direction and yet the good sense to value social life at its true worth, and to keep it the servant and not the master of their destiny. Just as Miss Edgeworth gave one of her characters “just as much religion as was good for him,” so Mrs. Mellor gave the Doctor just as much polish and social “flair” as was good for him, but not an ounce more. The happy result was that Mellor was given the means to accumulate a fine library and the leisure to make full use of it. A proof of the first is the illustration on this page of that corner of his library that contained his card index, and this is reproduced to show also that if he lacked method in business matters he possessed it to the fullest degree in his studies. A further proof is the fact that, on his retirement, after disposing of 30,000 volumes (chiefly of pamphlets), he still had eight tons of books to transport to London. The fact that his life was also ordered to give him the leisure to use this great library is proved by the wealth of quotation that enriches his works and also by the fact that for over 20 years while he was writing his “magnum opus,” “A Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry,” it was his practice to prepare the work for two stenographers every evening from 8 p.m. till 2 a.m. the work being typed next day. The only temptation that interrupted the invariability of this procedure was the occasional family game of cards mentioned above.

Fun and Fancy.

Although I still find that I have painted Mellor only as a dull dog, the very reverse is the truth. His early work on mathematics shows that the true bent of his genius was mathematical even more than chemical, and like all mathematicians he was a great lover of poetry and a master of whimsey and nonsense. It was curiously enough as Secretary of the Ceramic Society that he let himself go to the fullest extent, and although the seasons of his most carefree jollity were apparently those occasions when that Society held its conventions in foreign places, nevertheless even the ordinary routine printed proceedings of that extremely dull body are enlivened by sketches and jeux d'esprit from its irrepressible secretary. He was obviously the spoilt child among the grave and reverend seigniors, whose chief concern rested in the obscure chemistry of fusible and refractory clays, and in 1934 the Ceramic Society—yes, as a Society!—published an extraordinary volume of light and airy nothings entitled “Uncle Joe's Nonsense,” a volume of fun in prose, verse, and picture chosen by Mellor himself from his store of published nonsense and from letters to his nephews and nieces in Dunedin or to other friends. Such a tribute is probably unique, although I think something of the kind happened after the early death in the 'nineties of Holly, a similar spoilt child of a metallurgical society in the United States. The other comparisons evoked by the book are those of Mellor with two Professors of Mathematics, the Reverend Dodgshun (Lewis Carrol) page 13 and Stephen Leacock. If in future any Queen of England is induced by a reading of “Uncle Joe's Nonsense” to send an open order to her bookseller for a complete parcel of Mellor's published works, as Queen Victoria did for Lewis Carroll's, what a similar shock is in store for her! The reproductions show what a facile draughtsman and able cartoonist Mellor was and also show the airy inconsequence of his humour. What is more difficult to show is the amazing range of his reading in poetry and general literature and the wonderful memory that stored so much away for easy and apt quotation. I think, however, that I can manage to do something in that direction for you. Some twenty years ago Dr. Mellor wrote a letter to a nephew in Dunedin who, being, as all of us, muddled by Einstein's revolutionary conclusions, had asked his learned uncle to explain the mystery of curved and expanding space. The answer was written from Strat-ford-on-Avon where Mellor was staying the night on his way to Exeter and where he would not be writing with his library and card indexes within range. Now this letter contains in order the following quotations or references (1) three lines from W. M. Praed, (2) two lines from Omar Khayyam, (3) four lines from H. D. Ellis, (4) a quotation in Latin from an unnamed ancient writer, (5) a prose quotation of twenty-six words from E. Johnson (this gravels me), (6) a reference to “Lord Wharton's Lilliburlero,” (7) three lines from T. Campion, (8) a prose quotation of forty words from Francis Bacon, (9) a prose quotation of forty-two words from Bishop Wilkins, (10) a quotation of forty-five words from Lewis Carrol, (11) a reference to A. Eddington's estimate of the number of the stars, (11) a French quotation from S. Vatriquant, (12) the Latin motto of the Nominalists of the eleventh century, (13) another quotation from E. Johnson, twenty-four words, (14) a tag of Mr. Richard Swiveller, (15) a line from Tennyson's “Tiresias,” (16) a rough version of a saying from Oliver Wendell Holmes, (17) the same of one from Jules Verne, (18) a Latin maxim from Tertullian, (19) another quotation from Francis Bacon, (20) a philosophical statement in French from G. B. von Leibniz, (21) a thirty-two word quotation from Eddington, (22) a twenty-one word quotation from Montaigne, (23) the “What is Truth?” of Pontius Pilate, (24) a musing of Mr. Dooley from the “Dooley Monologues” (sic) by P. F. Dunne, and (25) a reference to Weller senior's experience with widows. The letter also contains three amusing cartoons of studies in the fourth dimension! The letter is light, amusing, friendly, and is a clear and helpful explanation of where reality ends and theoretical mathematics begin in Einstein's Topsy Turvy world. Doubtless a few of the quotations were fresh in Mellor's mind, since everybody was talking Einstein at the time, but the great majority were obviously quoted extempore for the benefit of a youthful relative, and the last reason also doubtless prompted the “placing” of the quotations. Mellor himself admits elsewhere that he had “a good memory as memories go.” Readers also must admit this, with perhaps the qualification that most memories don't go that way.

It is doubtless a jolt to readers when they are reminded that chemists agree that Mellor is in the very forefront of the ranks of the inorganic chemists, that there is, nor has been, no such outstanding figure among the organic chemists, that in his sixteen noble volumes Dr. Mellor virtually exhausted all that could be authoritatively said up-to-date on the theory and practice of Inorganic Chemistry—and that his researches on refractory materials and special steels comprised original work of great importance to Great Britain and the world.

Cartoon by Mellor on a domestic incident.

Cartoon by Mellor on a domestic incident.

(Arnold Bennett tells us the “Five Towns” are “Hanbridge, which has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an octopus and little Turnhill of a beetle.”—Ed.)

An Appreciation.

From Messrs. Booth, Macdonald and Co., Ltd., Christchurch, to the Stationmaster, Christchurch.

We wish to express our appreciation again for the attention given to our parcels which, in some cases, have to be dealt with by your officers only a short time before departure of trains.

Never one complaint have we had regarding late arrivals. As an illustration, we consigned a parcel to Palmerston South at 8.30 a.m. this morning. This we understand caught the Express at 8.35 a.m.—pretty good work. Such excellent service enables us to keep faith with our customers. We get plenty of knocks ourselves, but we certainly must give credit where it is due.

We should also like to mention the Railway Through Booking Office whose efficient work is included in this acknowledgment.