John Frederick Knott (9 December 1938 – 5 October 2017) was an English

metallurgist Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

and

materials scientist Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials scien ...

. From 1962 to 1966, Knott was a Research Officer at the Central Electricity Research Laboratories in

Leatherhead Leatherhead is a town in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, about south of Central London. The settlement grew up beside a ford on the River Mole, from which its name is thought to derive. During the late Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, after which he became a lecturer in the Department of Materials, Science and Metallurgy at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

between 1967 and 1981. In 1990, he moved to the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

, where he was Professor and Head of the School of Metallurgy and Materials until 1996, Dean of Engineering from 1995 to 1998 and the fifth Feeney Professor of Physical Metallurgy between 1994 and 2007. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 1990 and was awarded their Leverhulme Medal in 2005 "for his distinguished contributions to the quantitative scientific understanding of fracture processes in metals and alloys and its engineering applications". He was elected in 1988 as a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

. He died on 5 October 2017 at the age of 78.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Knott, John 1938 births 2017 deaths People from Bristol British metallurgists Academics of the University of Birmingham Fellows of the Royal Society Officers of the Order of the British Empire