Sidney Gilchrist ThomasBorn 16 Apr 1850; died 1 Feb 1885 at age 34.British metallurgist and inventor who developed (1875), with his cousin Percy Gilchrist, the Thomas-Gilchrist process that eliminates the phosphorus impurity of certain iron ores in the Bessemer converter. Phosphorus causes steel to be brittle and of little use. Yet most iron ores from British, French, German, and Belgian sources was phosphoric. Thomas conceived the idea of incorporating lime (or magnesia or magnesian limestone with similar basic chemical properties), as the lining of the Bessemer converter. Gilchrist, an industrial chemist at a large ironworks, confirmed that idea 4 Apr 1879. Thomas filed a patent in 1878. Even the waste slag was profitable to the early artificial fertilizer industry. He died at age 34 of tuberculosis.« |
