Membership voice, May - June 2007
TWI's ancestral leader in the forties and fifties Dr Harry Taylor has died, two years after his hundredth birthday.
The former Director of Research of the British Welding Research Association, as TWI was then known, was appointed principal in 1947. He followed the organisation's founder Dr Allan Ramsey Moon. His nine years in service saw the development of the country's leading welding, cutting and engineering centre grow from an offshoot of the Institute of Welding to being one of the nation's most progressive co-operative research organisations.
In a 1957 extract from the British Welding Journal, shortly after he moved to become Director of the Electrical Research Association, tribute was paid to his pioneering work on brittle fracture. The work was developed at BWRA and made his successor Dr Alan Wells a world authority on the subject a decade later. His career also embraced periods of employment with the Copper Development Association and Philips Lamps.
Born in 1904 Harry Taylor was educated at Taunton School, Battersea Polytechnic Institute and City and Guilds Engineering College. He married Gwendolyn Hilda Adams in 1931 with whom he had a son and two daughters.
Harry died on 9 March 2007. For the last year of his life he was well looked after in a nursing home. His funeral took place in Cwmbran, Monmouthshire on 27 March.
TWI owes much of its current scope and format to the vision of its early directors. They foresaw the benefits of close contacts with industry and the financial stability provided by an Industrial Membership base, ensuring that scientific developments were applied to solve practical industry problems. They also focused TWI's research and development effort towards better understanding of the behaviour of welded structures during service.
Today, assessment of materials properties subjected to a wide range of stresses and environments, through chemical analysis, complex mechanical testing, modelling and non destructive evaluation represents over half of TWI's technical activities. This understanding of materials behaviour is used at all stages of a product life cycle, from design through to failure investigations. It also contributes to the improvement of codes and standards, leading to increased reliability of products, safer designs and increased confidence in engineering structures.
Fred Delany - Head of Industrial Member Services
fred.delany@twi.co.uk
