Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

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

[section]

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.

* * *