Bob Moon was born in Cardiff, Wales, and proud of his Welsh heritage. He received a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wales and began his career in the South Wales steel industry. He subsequently moved to the Birmingham area where he worked on advanced titanium and zirconium alloys at Imperial Metals Industries (IMI). His final industrial position was at C.A. Parsons, Newcastle-upon-Tyne covering design and construction of large steam turbines.
He was a member of the academic staff at the University of Nottingham from 1967 to 2008 acting for periods as Director of Studies in the school of Mechanical, Materials, Manufacturing Engineering and Management, and as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. While his research interests encompassed a variety of topics, powder metallurgy was predominant in recent times, and he had more than 50 published papers on powder metallurgy and related topics.
I first met Bob in the late 1970s when I supplied him with powder-forged pucks that had been subjected to various thermo-mechanical treatments. He and his colleague Richard (Dick) Leheup subsequently published extensively in the journal Powder Metallurgy about the relationship between yield and fracture phenomena and density (porosity) in PM materials.
Bob had close ties to the PM communities in Eastern Europe. He was a regular speaker and attendee at the International Conference on Deformation and Fracture in Structural PM Materials held at Stará Lesná in the Slovak Republic as well as the ‘RoPM’ congresses held at various locations in Romania, and he loved the intense discussions that took place there as well as the nice and entertaining social events.
Passionate about the need to involve and develop a younger generation of scientists and engineers, Bob was instrumental in the establishment of the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA) Summer School on powder metallurgy and, from 1998 to 2008, was its scientific leader and coordinator. He continued to teach at the summer school through 2018, and few attendees will ever forget the sessions he conducted on the Analysis of Problems related to PM. When he relinquished the position of coordinator in 2008, the students surprised him during dinner at the hotel by serenading him with a rendition of ‘Sosban Fach’ (a traditional Welsh song).
While at Nottingham University, Bob helped develop equipment for the ‘skeleton’ bobsled discipline and visited the United States to attend the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah to support the U.K. team. He was pleasantly surprised to see the equipment he helped design on display in the lobby of the Advanced Materials Research Centre in Sheffield when the Summer School was held there in 2015.
Bob was an avid cricketer and played for many years at a high level.
He was very active in local politics serving as a member of Codnor Parish Council from 1995 to 2019. He was a former Mayor and Leader of the Heanor and Loscoe Town Council, Chair of Codnor Parish Council, and Leader of the Labour Group on Amber Valley Borough Council. He was a committed socialist and Christian, taking a very active role in his local church, St. James, Crosshill, Codnor.
Bob was a warm, compassionate and outgoing person and will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues. Anyone who knew Bob will have a ‘Bob Moon’ story to tell. He is survived by his beloved wife Anna, sons Alun, David and their families.