Dr. Joe Edwards FIMF (1925–2021)

Abstract

When I received the news that Dr. Joe Edwards had died on 10th March I was not only deeply saddened but also greatly shocked. I had been invited by members of his family to join his ‘online’ birthday party to celebrate the fact that on 20th December he had reached the grand old age of 95. With most of his considerable immediate family also involved he was obviously in excellent humour and looked to be in very good condition considering his age. So to hear a mere 11 weeks later that he had passed away was a nasty surprise. Joe Edwards was one of the outstanding members of the surface coatings industry during the mid and late twentieth century. Although there were many highly intelligent men and women involved in this profession at that time Joe stood out in terms of his intellectual ability and breadth of knowledge. He came from a working class family in Burslem, Stoke on Trent and was educated in local schools, finally at St. Joseph’s College Trentvale, run by the Christian Brothers. Joe was faithful to his family and educational backgrounds, and remained a devout Roman Catholic for the whole of his life. He excelled in the sciences and in September 1943 was accepted by the University of Birmingham to study chemistry. His excellence showed immediately in that, at the end of his first year, he was awarded the Burstal Prize for best student of the year and for three years he received a University Exhibition scholarship. The fact that he was awarded a 1st Class Hons. degree perhaps came as no surprise and resulted in him being accepted as a PhD student in January 1946. It has, however, proved impossible to obtain accurate details of Joe’s activities in his University years. Why, for example, he chose chemistry as his degree subject is not clear. Likewise the precise subject of his Doctorate and the name of his supervisor do not appear on any accessible records. However, Joe’s lifelong friend Dr. Peter Farr points out that all of this happened during wartime and situations were not as highly regulated then as they are currently. However, Joe completed his Doctorate in December 1948 and commenced work on electrodeposition at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in February 1949, which indicates that his Doctorate was closely related to this technology Joe’s ability was quickly recognised at BNFMRA and he was promoted to the position of Section Leader less than 3 years later in 1952. He spent 17 years at the Association becoming engaged in many technical investigations during this time which resulted in the publication of forty technical papers covering a wide range of topics. He is, however, best recognised for his management of a highly original and innovative study using radioactive compounds to study the mechanism of incorporation of addition agents into nickel electroplating solutions. The work was based on organic compounds where particular atoms of carbon and sulphur in the molecules were labelled using radioactive isotopes during their synthesis. This enabled the decomposition and incorporation of the molecules into the deposit to be studied in detail. Joe published a series of eight papers related to this topic in the Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing between 1962 and 1967 describing this work. The full extent of these studies has never been fully revealed since a considerable part of it was carried out for the Defence Industry under cover of the Official Secrets Act In the post-war years, however, the use of organic addition agents had become a matter of prime importance in the nickel plating industry. Prior to the Second World War nickel/chromium electrodeposits were very widely used in many applications, most importantly in the rapidly growing automotive industry due to their unique lustrous appearance and corrosion resistance. Unfortunately, the coating process at that time involved mechanically polishing the nickel deposit before the final chromium layer was applied, an expensive process. However, it had been shown that addition of selected organic addition agents to nickel solutions enabled the metal to be deposited in a fully bright condition. This eliminated the mechanical polishing stage thus achieving significant cost savings. The extent to which Joe’s work influenced the choice of materials for commercial applications is not clear since much of the development work by industry supply houses was directed towards formulating proprietary processes. However Joe’s unique and highly important contribution to the science of electroplating whilst at BNFMRA was quite rightly recognised by a number of very significant awards. From the Institute of Metal Finishing (now the Institute of Materials Finishing) he received the following:-