Frank William Harbord died at his residence, Englefield Green, Surrey, on December 27th, 1942, at the age of 82.
He received his technical education at the Royal School of Mines, where he graduated in 1882, winning the Bessemer Medal in the final examination. For ten years immediately following he was engaged with several firms in the manufacture of iron and steel in the Midlands, and in 1892 he was appointed Metallurgical Chemist to the Government of India at the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper‘s Hill.
In 1903 he was called upon to act as metallurgist to a Canadian Commission investigating electric smelting in European countries, and in 1905 he joined the late Edward Riley in practice as consulting metallurgists, the firm subsequently becoming Riley, Harbord & Law. In 1909 he was appointed to report to the Transvaal Government on the manufacture of iron and steel in that colony.
During the War of 1914-1918 he acted as honorary adviser in metallurgy to the Ministry of Munitions, and was awarded the C.B.E. He was also a Civil Member of the Ordnance Committee. In 1916 he received the Bessemer Gold Medal of the Iron and Steel Institute.
Mr. Harbord was elected a Member of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1903, and occupied the Presidential Chair in 1921-22. He was subsequently President of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1927-28.
Vol. 53, Trans IMM 1943-4, p.431
