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Professor Howard Worner was interviewed in 2005 for the Interviews with Australian scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.
The following summary of Worner's career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extract highlights Worner's work on lead creep and how certain chemical elements alter the rate of creep under different levels of pressure. It also considers the challenges faced in bringing an invention concept to life.
Howard Worner was born at Swan Hill, Victoria in 1913. In the late 1920's just before the depression his family moved to Bendigo where he attended technical primary school. He then attended the Bendigo School of Mines where he gained a Gold Medal in 1932. From here Worner progressed to the University of Melbourne where in 1934 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours.
In 1936 he went on to gain a Masters of Science (MSc) with First Class Honours through his work on the creep of lead and in particular the properties of lead under very low stresses over long periods of time. Through this research Worner produced research papers which caused great interest in the metallurgist community and beyond.
In 1942 at the age of 28, Worner became the youngest ever recipient of a Doctor of Science (DSc) from the University of Melbourne. This was awarded to him for the papers regularly published since beginning his Masters of Science.
After receiving his Doctorate, he began working as a research fellow in the Dental Materials Research Laboratories in Melbourne, quickly becoming a world expert in dental materials. Following this he took up a fellowship at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) researching dental materials.
Following on from both the war and his role at NHMRC, Worner accepted a role as Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Melbourne where he served for nine years. After railing against the idea for some time, he also became the Dean of Engineering at the university.
In 1955 Worner moved his family to Newcastle to take up a position with BHP, eventually becoming the Director of Research there. He became part of the body championing the establishment of a University of Newcastle, later to become a board member and be appointed to the first Council of the University of Newcastle. He was also intrinsic in the establishment of the University of Wollongong.
Worner left Australia in 1963 to work as an international consultant for a year. Initially he worked at the United States Steel Corporation but after a short time left to pursue opportunities in Europe which lead directly back to Australia working for Rio Tinto's company as Director of New Process Development for CRA. He retired from CRA in 1975.
In 1975 he moved back to Melbourne and until 1982 was Chairman of the Victorian Brown Coal Council.
In 1983 Worner moved to Wollongong and took up a research fellowship at the University of Wollongong where he became the founding Director of the Microwave Applications Research Centre. It was in this year that he also published a book entitled The Minerals of Broken Hill which was very successful and sought-after.
In 1973 Worner was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science.
In 1974 he was elected as Honorary Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Technology, Science and Engineering which went on to be inaugurated as an Academy in 1976.
In 1978 he was awarded a CBE – Commander of the Order British Empire for service to the discipline of science and the technology of energy.
In 1994 he was the recipient of the Australian Academy of Science's Ian Wark Medal and Lecture.
In 2003 Worner was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and science in metallurgy and materials engineering.
What sort of research into pure lead were you doing?
I was looking in particular at its properties under very low stresses but for long periods of time. I found that traces of some elements, such as bismuth and tellurium, altered the rate at which pure lead would creep. Some would actually accelerate it, some would slow it down, and others would first slow it and then cause it to start creeping at an increasing rate. These were all new discoveries.This applied to steel at red heat, but lead creep would change at room temperature. Fortunately, the school where I graduated had a big underground room where the temperature didn't change very much, and that made a marvellous laboratory for me.
But one of its applications made you uneasy, didn't it?
That's true. It had been realised that the steady creep of lead when certain elements like tellurium were added to it could be applied to timing devices that would trigger off explosions after half an hour or five hours or whatever. I was a pacifist in those days, and I wasn't very enamoured to discover that one of my inventions was being used as a timing device in explosives.
You were telling me during lunch that you used to do some dreadful things during your research.
Well, in particular, I used to chew lead, 99.99 pure metal. It had an astringent taste which I found very pleasant, and I would chew it like chewing gum. Even then lead was not thought to be a good thing to ingest, but I didn't think it was that bad. And nobody stopped me from doing it, although they should've said, 'Hey, hey, you shouldn't chew that stuff.' I later came to realise what a poison it was.
During your time with CRA you worked on a revolutionary new process called WORCRA, for continuous smelting. How did this process get its name, and what was the challenge it involved?
WOR was the first part of my own name, and CRA was the abbreviation for Conzinc Riotinto Australia. The concept still hasn't been fully developed. Everybody agrees it is wonderful, but the difficulty is to scale it up. In Sweden, in relation to steel, I managed to do it at up to eight or nine tonnes per hour scale.
So, conceptually it can be done, but there is a lot of technical challenge?
That's right. I demonstrated that these things could be done on one, two, three, four and up to nine or ten tonnes per hour, but the difficulty was in going from there to 100 tonnes per hour, or 500 tonnes per hour.
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
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