Kenneth Henderson Jack. 12 October 1918—28 January 2013

Abstract

For all but 5 of his 94 years Kenneth Henderson Jack lived, studied, and worked within 10 miles of where he was born, in the North-East of England. Educated in chemistry, he became an X-ray crystallographer. He applied his knowledge of chemistry and his skills in crystallography to the three main areas of materials science: metals, glasses and ceramics. In the 1940s and 1950s he carried out classic studies of the interstitial alloys of the iron–carbon–nitrogen system; between 1957 and 1964, when he worked in industry, he made seminal contributions to glass technology; from 1964 onwards he pioneered a whole new field of oxy-nitride ceramics and glasses, the sialons, and by doing so put his beloved North-East firmly on the international map as a centre of excellence in ceramic science. Ken Jack was fond of saying that, had it not been for World War II, which interrupted his teacher training and took him into university research, he would probably have remained a school teacher and been happy to do so. But, in fact, he did remain a teacher. He was an inspiring lecturer and the researchers who learned their trade by his example went on to lead academic and industrial research groups around the world.