Thomas Percy Hoar (1907-1978)

Dr. Hoar (known to his many friends as Sam) was born in 1907 at Rochester, England. He entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, as a major scholar in 1926 and after graduating in 1930, began research with Dr. U. R. Evans on corrosion mechanisms. Their 1932 paper on the velocity of corrosion was one of the first to correlate corrosion rate quantitatively with measured electrochemical reaction rates. In 1933 Dr. Hoar published a paper on the oxygen electrode in which the equilibrium potential was estimated by extrapolation of experimental Tafel lines. After being awarded the Ph.D. degree by the University of Cambridge for this work, Dr. Hoar conducted detailed research into the mechanism of the corrosion of tin and tinplate in neutral and acid solutions, which led among other things to the process of chromate inhibition for tinplate and the recognition of the importance of steel-base composition, as demonstrated in one of the early applications of statistical analysis to corrosion research.

He was appointed lecturer in the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge in 1946 and has taught many generations of undergraduate students the fundamentals of thermodynamics and electrochemistry. Dr. Hoar was a founder-member and second president of CITCE, now called the International Society for Electrochemistry (ISE), and was appointed editor-in-chief of "Electrochimica Acta" at its inception in 1959. His scientific work brought him many honors. He received the Whitney Award from the National Association of Corrosion Engineers in 1946, the Hothersall Medal of the Institute of Metal Finishing in 1962, the Palladium Medal Award of The Electrochemical Society in 1969, and was the first recipient of the U.R. Evans Award of the Institution of Corrosion Science and Technology in 1976.

The remarks made by Prof. Stuart Leach upon the conferring of the first U.R. Evans Award provide a measure of the loss that will be felt by those both within and without the corrosion community. He said, "Dr. Hoar has made a major contribution to the establishment and administration of bodies concerned with corrosion prevention. He has made a major contribution to education in corrosion prevention. He has made a major contribution to increasing the corrosion awareness of our administrators and industrialists."

Journal of the Electrochemical Society 125(9), 399C, (1978), thanks to John McHardy