A Hat-trick of Medals

The Scottish Association for Metals (SAM) made three awards of it’s prestigious Riley Medal at it’s meeting on 17th November.

The Riley Medal is named after James Riley, the first President of the West of Scotland Iron and Steel Institute in 1892, from merged with the Institute of Metals to form SAM in 1974.  He was a nationally known figure and a member of the Iron and Steel Institute based in London.  

The medal has been awarded discontinuously over almost 100 years in recognition of the impact individuals have made to the promotion and advancement of the science and technology of metals, alloys and allied materials either technically, industrially or professionally.  Previous recipients have included Viscount Weir, who led the Weir Group and Sir Ian Wood, of Wood Group.

This time the awards were made to Professor Neville Baker (University of Strathclyde) in recognition of his contribution to the understanding of the metallurgy of steels, Professor Liz Tanner (Queen Mary University of London) for her contribution to the development of biomedical materials and Dr John Wilcox, for his service to the profession both locally and nationally.  Both Neville Baker and Liz Tanner are past Presidents of SAM whilst John Wilcox has been Secretary since 1983.

The awards were made at the R W Thomson Prestige Lecture, an annual event organised in turn by each of the three Scottish local societies.  This year the lecture was delivered on-line by Nigel Whitehead, Chief Technology Officer, BAe Systems on the topic of “autonomous systems”.