Tony Nicholson was born on 11 August 1930 at Barton on Humber, but soon afterwards his family moved to Broughton, close to the steelmaking town of Scunthorpe where his father worked in the ore mining division of Appleby Frodingham Steel Company.
He obtained a scholarship to Brigg Grammar and after leaving school, went to work at Appleby Frodingham in the melting shop. There he spent 4 years studying part time and obtained the Ordinary National Certificate in Metallurgy. An impressive student, he was awarded a state scholarship and went to Birmingham University to read metallurgy, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1954.
After graduation, he carried out his National Service in the Royal Air Force becoming a Pilot Officer, before returning to Birmingham University to carry out research on metal fatigue in aircraft for a PhD.
Dr Nicholson moved to Rotherham in 1959 to join the internationally renowned Swinden Research Laboratories of United Steel Companies, which later became part of the nationalised British Steel Corporation. He initially worked on decarburisation, oxidation of steel at rolling temperatures and hot workability of steel. He extended his expertise to solidification and casting when he took charge of all research work on production metallurgy. In 1972, he became Process Research Manager supervising arc furnace steelmaking research and developing new techniques for melting and subsequent treatment of liquid steel including ladle metallurgy practices and inclusion engineering, which were applied throughout British Steel and United Engineering Steels. He took great interest in improving steel quality by the production of clean steels, which led to his chairmanship of the technical committees for two International Conferences on Clean Steel in the 1980s in Hungary, which were organised by the Institute of Metals (now Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining) with the Hungarian Mining & Metallurgical Society.
Tony Nicholson was awarded the Thomas Medal in 1984 for a joint paper on ultraclean and low sulphur steels at River Don works. After he retired from Swinden Laboratories, he received the Hadfield Medal from the Institute of Materials (IoM) in 1991 to recognise his major contributions to steel process research, and the industry generally, throughout his long career. He was a member of the editorial committee for Ironmaking and Steelmaking magazine for many years and was chairman of the committee from 1987 to 1990.
During the latter stages of his industrial career and in conjunction with IoM, he became involved in encouraging the study of metallurgy at universities and in particular, encouraging school children to take up science subjects. Consequently, after leaving the steel industry, he joined a company specialising in the production of science books for schools.
Outside his business life, he had a wide range of interests from motorbikes to sailing, and woodwork (including building a canoe). His musical skills included classical guitar and playing in a folk band, while an interest in jazz assisted the development of Latin American dancing in later life! He was also fond of the chamber music of Beethoven and other great composers and had a wide knowledge of the classics in addition to a well developed sense of humour.
Unfortunately, Tony’s health was affected by respiratory problems. In later life, he experienced meningitis, and then in 2002, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease before suffering a stroke in 2004. Throughout this time, Tony was supported by his devoted wife, Ruth, whom he married within 3 months of their first meeting in 1960. Tony loved their three children and assisted them in many aspects of their lives, while their seven grandchildren provided much happiness.
Tony Nicholson died on 27 July 2012 after 10 years fighting Parkinson’s disease. He will be remembered with great respect by his many colleagues in the UK steel industry and by fellow process specialists around the world. He was a very good researcher, always keen to understand the metallurgical background to the process and to use his knowledge to solve production problems and to develop new technology. Throughout his career, he established strong collaboration with universities and international research organisations. He guided and encouraged his staff, and had great enthusiasm for their work, and that of others throughout the world who sought to improve steel process technology.