Lloyd Montgomery Pidgeon
Lloyd Montgomery Pidgeon, was a Canadian chemist who developed the Pidgeon process, one of the methods of magnesium metal production, via a silicothermic reduction. He is considered the "father" of academic metallurgical research in Canada.
Biography
Born in Markham, Ontario, the son of E. Leslie Pidgeon, a United Church of Canada minister, and Edith Gilker, he received a Bachelor of Arts in science from the University of Manitoba in 1925, a Master of Science from McGill University in 1927, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from McGill University in 1929.In 1929, Pidgeon was awarded a Sir William Ramsay Memorial Fellowship from Oxford University and worked under Sir Alfred Egerton until 1931.
In 1931, he joined the National Research Council, where he discovered the process that bears his name. Because of the demand for magnesium during the Second World War, a magnesium plant was built by Dominion Magnesium Limited near Ottawa, and five more magnesium plants were built during the war in the US to his design.
Pidgeon was appointed Director of Research by DML in 1941.
In 1943, he was appointed chairman of the department of metallurgy at the University of Toronto. He retired from that post in 1969.
Pidgeon died in Kingston, Ontario at the age of 96, the author of over 50 original scientific papers as well as the holder of a number of patents in the field of chemical metallurgy.