TURNER, WILLIAM ERNEST STEPHEN

(b. Wednesbury, Staffordshire, England, 22 September 1881; d. Sheffield, England, 27 October 1963), glass technology.

Turner was the eldest son and the second of seven children of William George Turner and Emma Blanche Turner. His working-class parents sacrificed so that he could gain an education. Turner progressed from a Smethwick board school to King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham, and then in 1898 to Mason University College (which became Birmingham University in 1900). He graduated with a bachelor of science in 1902 and earned a master of science in 1904. Turner’s first post was at Sheffield University under W. P. Wynne, where he early showed his characteristic capacity for organization. He lectured on physical chemistry for metallurgical students. His earlier experimental research was in conventional physical chemistry (for example, solubility and molecular weights in solution).

During this part of his career Turner continually urged the employment of scientists in industry and the establishment of a closer liaison between universities and industry. On the outbreak of war in 1914, he successfully advocated the formation of a Sheffield University technical advisory committee to consider problems raised by the cutting off of supplies from Germany. Although the initial problems lay in the field of metallurgy, glass soon became an issue. Turner drew up a report on the glass industry of Yorkshire, in which he dealt with the poor practical methods then in use, the paucity of technical literature on glass, and the need for teaching and research. He recommended that Sheffield become a center for instruction in glass manufacture. It was a triumph for Turner that, owing to his foresight, a Department of Glass Technology was created in the middle of the war.

At this time the government was promoting research associations (supported by both industry and government), but Turner resisted this type of organization and retained, through an appointed committee known as the Glass Delegacy, a high degree of independence for his department from the university, government, and industry while also securing the support of each. A separate organization, the Glass Research Association, foundered in 1925, and Turner’s Department of Glass Technology held unchallenged world leadership in glass research for a generation. The research was directed mainly toward industrial problems, his view being that it was “wiser to tackle the immediate problems first and then let the need for the long dated, fundamental problems grow out of the imperative need for more information or for sounder basic principles” (Mellor Memorial Lecture, 1957). Typical problems had to do with the composition of raw materials for lead crystal, the resistance of chemical glass to reagents, and the design of furnaces. Fundamental studies emerged, for example, on the variation of the physical properties of glass over a range of compositions, and the effect of small quantities of minor additives on these properties. Demands of other industries also raised problems, including that of the design of glass-to-metal seals in electrical construction.

World War II limited the freedom that Turner and his department had hitherto enjoyed. But the department continued to give valuable technical service, and even to increase its student enrollment. The Department of Glass Technology later reverted to a more orthodox form of administration comparable to that found in other university departments.

In 1916 Turner established the Society of Glass Technology, and a Journal began appearing in 1917. He was the editor until it ceased publication in 1959. By that time the form and content of the journal seemed no longer to meet the needs of a science and industry that he himself had done so much to change. Turner promoted international exchanges and was president of an International Commission for Glass Technology from 1933 to 1953.

During his retirement Turner encouraged the growing application of science to the archaeology of glass. He was an inveterate traveler, and although physically handicapped by the results of childhood poliomyelitis, he was a vigorous walker, even in the Alps.

Turner was married twice, first to Mary Isobel Marshall (died 1939), who bore him four children, and then in 1943 to Annie Helen Nairn, an artist in glass, who designed the presidential badge of the Society of Glass Technology. He was an officer of the Order of the British Empire (1918), a fellow of the Royal Society (1938), and the holder of many foreign honors.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a list of Turner’s writings, see Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, X (1964), 325–356. This work lists twenty papers from the period 1905–1914, mainly on physical chemistry; some 240 research papers from 1914–1954, on glass technology; some eighty lectures and addresses on general industrial problems; and some thirty papers on glass archaeology.

An obituary notice is in Glass Technology, 4 (Dec. 1963), 165–169, with two portraits.

Personal reminiscences are in W. E. S. Turner, “The Department of Glass Technology and Its Work Since 1915,” in Journal of the Society of Glass Technology, 21 (1937), transactions 5–43; R. W. Doughlas, “W. E. S. Turner–Applied Scientist,” in Glass Technology, 8 (February 1969), 19–28.

Frank Greenaway