Tony Mercer, BSc, FICorr (21 November 1928–20 October 2020)

We have only recently heard of the death of Tony Mercer who was a former editor of Corrosion Engineering Science and Technology in its British Corrosion Journal (BCJ) days. Tony succeeded Hector Campbell in 1989 and continued for 8 years until his retirement, when Paul McIntyre took over.

Tony spent his entire career at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) establishing an international reputation in corrosion inhibition and control particularly for engine coolant systems. He was born in Southwick, West Sussex, attended the nearby Steyning Grammar School and, after leaving in 1945 with the Higher School Certificate, was recruited as an assistant experimental officer in the then Chemical Research Laboratory which was adjacent to NPL on the Teddington site in west London. During the next few years, he obtained his BSc degree by part-time study and joined Frank Wormwell’s team to work on inhibitors / anti-freeze mixtures for engine coolant systems leading to the award of a patent in 1952 [1]. The benzoate-nitrite inhibitor system (the basis of the patent) became an effective standard for automotive engine coolants and produced a welcome stream of royalties for some 20 years thereafter! Later work to determine the limits of operation of the mixture were published in several papers from 1952 [2]. Continuing his work with inhibitors, now with Brasher and Kingsbury, his attention was turned to the mechanism of chromate inhibition. By using ⁵¹Cr as a radiotracer, mass changes due to passivation of iron by chromate of around 100 nanograms per square centimetre were measured, an outstanding sensitivity for the time [3].

Tony worked on many problems of industrial relevance during his career, particularly assisting with and eventually heading up the National Corrosion Advisory Service set up after the 1971 Hoar Report [4] on the costs of corrosion. However, his research returned time and again to corrosion inhibition and, in 4 consecutive papers with co-workers, he explored the comparative performance and mechanisms of different compounds [5]. He wrote an excellent review of the work on inhibitors within the Corrosion Section of the Division of Materials Applications at the NPL in 1973 [6]. After retirement his 1995 paper with Lumbard was a tour-de-force describing more than 20 years of previous research at NPL on corrosion and corrosion prevention of mild steel in water [7] accordingly winning the 1997 Guy Bengough Award of the Institute of Metals.

Tony was a passionate advocate of standardisation for corrosion measurement and testing and was variously a member of the BSI Committee on Corrosion of Metals and Alloys, the ISO Working Group on Corrosion Terminology, the UK National Council of Corrosion Societies, ASTM Corrosion Committee G1, and the Corrosion Committee of the Institute of Materials. He attended many conferences, particularly the inaugural conference on corrosion inhibition held at the University of Ferrara and subsequent quinquennial events. In 1980 he became Scientific Secretary of the European Federation of Corrosion (EFC) and initiated the EFC newsletter [8], publication of which continues to this day. For many years, he was also an active member on the EFC working party on inhibition and reported on methods for the standardisation of inhibitor testing in 1985 [9].

On retiring from the Corrosion Section of the Materials Application Division of the NPL in 1989 Tony Mercer succeeded Hector Campbell as 4th editor of the British Corrosion Journal [10]. During his tenure the journal celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1990 with a series of specially commissioned articles and further developed its international reputation such that by 1996 when he retired from the editorship over 80% of contributions were from outside the UK [11]. The internationalisation of the submissions was reflected a few years’ later by the adoption of our current name. He stepped down from the journal in 1996 to spend more time with his family at their home in Surrey. However, he remained active with the EFC editing a series of books and also contributing to the 3rd and 4th editions of the major reference work ‘Shreir’s Corrosion’. In 1998 he was awarded the Martí i Franquès Medal by the EFC on behalf of the Spanish Society of Industrial Chemistry in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the advancement of the science and technology of corrosion through international cooperation, transfer of knowledge, and education [12].

He had met Stella, his future wife, when a promotional film was being produced by the Chemical Research Laboratory on the benefits of adding anti-freeze to vehicle coolant. She was employed in the biology department and was co-opted to do the voiceover: ‘At the first sign of winter many motorists think of cracked radiators and cylinder blocks … ’. Tony was a keen sportsman being active in the departmental cricket, hockey, and badminton teams. In the 1960s some of the best scientific work on inhibitors was being carried out in the USSR and China so, in his spare time, he learnt sufficient Russian and Mandarin Chinese in order to be able to read relevant papers in those languages. He was always interested in expanding his knowledge and Stella and he were greatly interested in antiquity. Thus, in retirement, they spent much time travelling around the Mediterranean on educational cruises and archaeological trips. He spent his final days in a care home in the Sussex village of Alfriston where he died of old age.

Tony is survived by his widow, Stella, their daughter Katherine, and grandchildren: Ella (a solicitor), Eve (a journalist), Ewan (a student gap year), Emily (doing a sports degree)

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Stuart Lyon, with contributions from Stella, Adrian (his nephew) and former colleagues at NPL.

Licensed under CC-BY-NC

Stuart Lyon

Department of Materials, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

[email protected]