Howard Knox Worner
Howard Knox Worner (1913 - 2006)
Howard Knox Worner was born at Swan Hill, Victoria, in August 1913. He had siblings Neil (1914) and Hill (1917).
He completed primary school in Yassam (now Beauchamp) Victoria, 1927 and after primary school attended Technical School in Bendigo studying woodworking and metalworking. He then studied for three years at the Bendigo School of Mines, Applied Sciences, majoring in chemistry with courses in metallurgy and geology.
He gained a scholarship to the University of Melbourne and did a combined science and engineering degree. Upon graduating from Melbourne University, Worner was offered a position in the Defence Laboratories where he worked for six weeks before being asked to move on because he worked too quickly. The Director thought he was more suited to a career in research.
Worner returned to Melbourne University to do research for a Master of Science working for Professor JN Greenwood. Worner was then asked to conduct some demonstrating and to give the occasional lecture. By 1935 he was appointed as a lecturer in Metallurgy and continued working partly on research and partly on teaching.
By 1936 Worner had completed all requirements for a Master of Science degree. From 1936 onwards he continued to pursue research in creep of metals; in this research he discovered a number of phenomena that were previously unknown. He was also requested to research two other problems presented by the Professor of Dental Surgery. The problems were solved by Worner and he published papers in 1937 which were well received by the dental profession. During 1938 and 1939 he did further work on dental materials including metals and ceramics.
In 1939 Worner was offered a Fellowship in the National Health and Medical Research Council to work on dental and surgical materials, which resulted in him transferring to the dental college which was associated with the Dental Hospital in Spring Street, Melbourne.
In 1942 at the age of 28, Worner submitted for and received a Doctor of Science degree. He continued in dental and surgical work until 1946 when the Commonwealth Department of Health awarded him a travelling fellowship which saw him travel to England and the United States to study the work which had begun in both of those countries, and which was parallel to the work Worner was doing in Melbourne.
Worner developed special facilities and equipment for evaluating the properties of all sorts of materials including splints and implant materials and produced facial prosthesis for replacing noses, chins and ears, and splints for broken limbs.
In 1946 whilst on his travelling fellowship, Worner was urged by his peers to apply for the Chair of Metallurgy at Melbourne University. He transferred his travelling fellowship to his friend Alan Docking and returned to Melbourne where he became Professor of Metallurgy at the age of 33. In 1953 he was invited to become Dean of Faculty of Engineering.
Worner was approached in 1955 by Mr Ian McLennan (General Manager BHP) to become Director of Research for BHP. Worner accepted and moved to Newcastle, NSW. During his time living in Newcastle, Worner was involved in the infancy of Newcastle University.
He assisted colleagues in the works introduce and establish the new practice of oxygen steelmaking. By 1961 Worner had permission to build a launder furnace to test the concept of continuous steel making. Seeking to reduce the temperature of the launder, which instead of cooling down got to temperatures over 1700 degrees, Worner decided to use lump ore in the process and realised what they were achieving was the concept of continuous bath smelting. BHP were not interested in bath smelting at the time so Worner left in 1962 to continue testing the concept in the non-ferrous field as well as steelmaking. Upon leaving, Worner took out patents to cover the new applications of bath smelting.
He travelled to the United States in 1963 then on to Europe and the United Kingdom to gauge interest in his ideas. He returned to Australia to work for CRA after being persuaded by the Chairman of Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation. Maurice Morby and another senior director of CRA offered Worner the position of Director of New Process Development. He seconded staff, and within days built a small furnace to conduct testing of the concept of continuous bath smelting for copper concentrates and then nickel. From his first interview with CRA it was decided that if technologies were to be successful they would be given the name WORCRA representing both Worner and CRA.
In 1963 WORCRA processes were born, and the patented concepts were verified within weeks in non-ferrous and ferrous applications. In the early 1970's upon Morby's retirement the work was halted due to costs; the new Chairman, Arthur Rew, decided that CRA would no longer be in the business of inventions. Whilst no commercial WORCRA furnace was built in Australia, several of Worner's ideas have been incorporated in later technology in Russia, Europe, Japan and China.
At the time of his retirement from CRA in 1975, there was a great deal of concern about the oil position throughout the world and a great deal of interest existed in other ways of producing liquid fuels and Worner became actively interested in that area.
Upon his retirement, the Victorian government approached him to become Chairman of the Brown Coal Committee (now Council) and the Federal Government invited him to become Chairman of the National Energy Advisory Committee. Worner shifted his interest to energy conservation and the challenge of making liquid fuels from coal.
In 1984-85 Worner returned to CRA as a consultant seeking to find applications for densified brown coal. Whilst using a microwave oven to dry out a mixture of brown coal paste and copper concentrates, Worner 'accidentally' discovered findings which led to several years of research in microwave technology.
In the mid 1980's Worner was elected as Fellow of Australian Academy of Science and Foundation Fellow of Academy of Technological Science and Engineering.
Worner moved to Wollongong in 1986 and continued with his experiments at home, discovering that microwaves could be used to set in motion chemical reactions turning copper concentrates into metallic copper. Worner approached the Technical College in Wollongong to use their foundry and was able to demonstrate on a scale up to a few kilowatts that microwaves can be used to initiate smelting reactions and a number of metallurgical processes on a small scale.
In 1987 Professor Ken McKinnon of the University of Wollongong heard of the researches and invited Worner to become Director of a new Microwave Application Research Centre within the University with ongoing associations with TAFE. Worner was made an Honorary Professor of the University at the age of 73. In 1989 MARC was incorporated into the University's commercial company, the lllawarra Technology Corporation Limited (ITC) for which Worner was a consultant.
Howard Warner was a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia and was awarded the Order of the British Empire - Commander (Civil) in 1977.
Howard Worner died on November 17 2006.
Prepared by Tricia Willis, May 2006 from oral history interview conducted on 23 July 1996.
An obituary for Howard Knox Worner by the Australian Institute of Science may be accessed at:
To access an oral history interview with Howard Knox Worner please use this link:
https://heritage.engineersaustralia.org.au/wiki/Oral_Histories_Sydney
