Ken Mills

In 2002, the "Mills Symposium on Metals, Slags, and Glasses: High Temperatures, Properties and Phenomena" was held to celebrate Mills' contributions to science.

Mills' main research was carried out on metals and alloys, slags and refractories. In addition to his experimental work he carried out major reviews on the properties of these materials; he was a major contributor to the Slag Atlas (2nd edition 1995).

In 1994, Mills joined Imperial College London as a Professor and lectured on metal production and heat and mass transfer. His research at Imperial College has been principally focused on mould fluxes for continuous casting and slags used in other steelmaking processes and on thermo-physical properties of alloys and slags. He also revived his interest in the estimation of the properties of slags and alloys from their chemical compositions. Mills gave courses on the estimation of slag properties in South Africa and at the TMS Conference 2012 in Florida.

In 1974, he became head of a group working on the measurement of physico-chemical properties of materials related to heat and fluid flow in high-temperature processes, known as the Slags group. The group consisted of, amongst others: Brian Keene, Sandy Powell, Rob Brooks, Abayomi Olusanya, Abas Shirali, Austin Day, Brian Monaghan, Lindsay Chapman, Richard Andon, Amanda Barnicoat, Mike Richardson, David Hayes and Peter Quested. Quested took over the running of the group in 1993; Mills officially retired at 60, although he continued to work at NPL.

On returning to the UK in 1963, Mills joined the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) in Teddington, where he developed novel measurement methods for thermodynamic properties at high temperatures.

Mills graduated in chemistry from the University of Newcastle in 1956 and, in 1960, was awarded a PhD by Sheffield University for work on carbides in steels and their effect on creep strength. From 1960 to 1962, he continued his research in the US, at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, working on the thermodynamics of alloys at high temperature. There then followed a short period at the US Steel, Edgar Bain Research Laboratories working with E.T. Turkdogan.

Kenneth Claughan Mills (13 February 1935 – 13 May 2018), was head of the Slags group at the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) and a visiting professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London.