 Okay so we're just about to begin an interview with Roderick Guthrie. We are at McGill University on November 12, 2015 and the interviewer as usual will be William McCrim. So just to begin could you please state your full name? My full name is Roderick Ian Lawrence Guthrie. And your age I'm 74. And where were you born actually? I was born in England Sutton Coalfield. My father was in the RAF and so that was bomber command there. So yeah I was born in the Midlands. What year? 1941. Okay right in the middle of it all. Yes yeah. So as a child what did, first of all was your dad always in the RAF? No no he was a teacher. He was a housemaster actually at Bishop Visee's grammar school which was a nice school in Sutton Coalfield. And that's where we were yes. And what did you do as a child for your father past the time? What were your interests? I remember well my interests were as a child. I was interested in trying to learn how to read and that took until about four or five. And then we went to Cyprus then which was lovely. And I spent about four years there and then I came back as a chorister at Durham Cathedral and that was a tough time. So I had that was a boarding school. So 17-week terms was rather long time. But anyway I survived that and then went to Nottingham High School which was a wonderful school. And at Durham I hadn't learned anything about science really. So I also was interested in history and I liked history very much. So my subjects were mainly on the art side until I went to Nottingham High. And then the sputnik turned up here and the first sputnik turned up and I was fascinated by all that science side of things. So that's when I decided I'd abandon history and Latin and the arts and move into science. So I became a scientist and so I left school at the age of 18. Went to Imperial College and What was your degree going to be? In metallurgy. Why a metallurgy right away? Because that's quite specific a lot. Yeah it was. It was. Well I figured out well metallurgy combines chemistry. It combines physics, mathematics and I was playing with the idea of chemical engineering. Chemistry was out because there were so many chemists and I took the precaution of looking at what you could expect after getting a chemistry degree. It wasn't very much. It was everybody was doing chemistry and I thought well I'll narrow the competition down a bit. I was very interested in chemical engineering but metals had an attraction for me because I'd been playing around with metals as a teenager. So I used to make model ships and model aircraft so I was busy doing that and so I was melting down lead in the house and things like that for keels for boats and things like that. And I was blowing up my leg and I blew up my knee in the age of about 17 and it was a first year sixth at Nottingham High and the chemistry master had a prize essay and it was on metals because he'd met the professor of metallurgy at Nottingham University. So I had a lot of time to investigate metals in the library while I was still recovering from my leg which was in plaster for about 10 weeks. So of course I managed to win that prize and became very interested in metals so I looked at metallurgy and decided I wanted to go to London because London was a good spot. There was a time of the Beatles there and all that sort of thing so we had a good time in London. What's happening? The ads are happening in place. So it's funny because you mentioned you like metallurgy because it kind of embodies all the sciences but at the same time usually as a metallurgist you'll become very specialized in one facet of metallurgy. So right away were there specific classes or subjects that you really realized that you liked and that you were going to go into? Yes, that took me into my PhD basically because I did my first degree and I didn't really like the problem of doing these little samples to it and looking under microscopes. I found out that I was as much more interested in bulk things in big material, macroscopic. Like your boats and planes? Like boats and planes and things that work so I decided that I liked process metallurgy and that immediately takes you into industry. So if you're looking at processes, the best processes are in industry so it takes you into industry which is what I wanted to do when I graduated from Imperial. I wanted to go into industry but I got interviewed by Professor Williams who was here and Professor Williams said well you're coming as a postdoc so I was coming as a postdoc to Canada and he said well can't you come as a staff member? I said no because you're not giving me enough money because you're giving me $10,000 as a postdoc Drills fellow and you're only going to give me $8,400 as a professor. Why would I want to do that? So he said well I'll make it up. I'll make it up to $10,000. I said well I don't want to do any lectures. I just want to do research. So he said well I'll write a letter to that effect. I never actually got the letter but I agreed in the meantime to become a professor so I came over with the job and so I came to McGill as a professor. And what had your thesis been? My thesis was on spherical cat bubbles in liquid metals so I was sending up the you know these big gas bubbles they look like mushrooms inverted mushrooms so I was sending up these bubbles in liquid silver. I built my own equipment. Are you talking when it's being heated in a ladle or? No no I'm just talking about I had a column a mnemonic tube and I put liquid I put silver in it and liquefied it heated it up made the furnace and everything and had a little cup at the bottom turned it over and measured the mass transfer coefficients how quickly the bubbles dissolved. So oxygen dissolves in silver it's got a very high solubility but anyway I managed to get around that and figure it out and get some mass transfer coefficients. So that was a big project and yeah I did some good work there. I did good research. So coming to McGill this was your first time in Canada I assume? Yes yeah. So did you find a there was a big difference between McGill and Imperial and if so what was that difference sir? No I think basically McGill was a little bit behind the times but it was a good university and yeah the faculty club was it was a place where you could meet a lot of people and there were quite a lot of people from Britain at McGill. Yeah well it's always attracted international students yeah quite a bit. So yeah so yeah McGill was very good it was very very nice I liked it but I still went out into industry so right away so I went off I think I went down to Atlas stainless steels the first summer with my wife and then came back that fall and then I went down to DeFasco I went to Atomic Energy second second year and then I went down to DeFasco in the third year and worked with the people down there. You worked in the labs? Worked in the research department and also in the plant I saw I worked in the plant and I went through the whole of steel making there iron making and steel making my first year I was down working on the blast furnaces putting oil injection into furnaces we were trying to see how much oil we could inject into furnaces to replace coke. So you were both here and at DeFasco at the same time? Yes. So you agreed not to teach but did you end up teaching? I ended up teaching yeah but so I ended up teaching yeah I did teach yes. How was that? It was good it was good it was a bit tough getting the first lectures off the ground but and and I had to change my marking system because they all failed so I had to improve that. You were one of those? Those perhaps. You're one of those types yeah not not very but now I'm a very very nice prof. So so Throat how long did you work for DeFasco? Because I mean you've worked for McGill throughout your career right? Yes yeah but DeFasco how long did that last? It was about 25 years okay yeah 25 years of up and down it got a bit hectic towards the end and then we formed this center the McGill metals process McGill metals processing center so we so that sort of took me away from being able to spend a lot of time in one place. I also work with Alkan as well Alkan in Kingston and also up in Arvida so that was getting a bit hectic the whole thing so so I finally became a proper professor as William said and gave up that and opened up the center. It was hectic why? Just because of the constant travel. The travel was you know I was coming back talking to students here at the weekends going back in the summertime and working full-time there and it was great I enjoyed it a lot but it was quite hectic yeah for sure but I learned a lot from industry yeah and and if you could are there any big differences you could point out between industry and academia? Industry is much nicer I think. In a sense industries nicer because you're all working on the same page so in universities one has to not work quite that way if you're going to advance in a university I believe you have to do your own research. This has changed actually in recent history so people are now doing a lot of collaborative work between themselves at universities so they're doing teamwork here now but in the past I remember it was more individual professors making their way and in industry it was the same thing but in industry it was it was a collaborative approach I found anyway so I enjoyed my time in industry. I had a few people from industry also tell me the big difference they would often or difficulties as well they would encounter with them being from industry and then working with someone straight out of academia was that theoretically they had a lot of good ideas but they practically they didn't they didn't understand it didn't get it yeah yeah did do you find that that to be true? That's true yes I think it's very true yeah yeah now from from either side or both sides were there any dysfunctional jobs throughout your career or projects even? A dysfunctional job a dysfunctional projects no I think it was all all successful dysfunctional personalities yes there's a lot of those around but that's not worth talking about so I won't talk about it okay okay not even not even like environments or environments a dysfunctional environment oh in terms of dysfunctional environment not really know where production was was bad or no I think it was they were very good in industry they were great yeah I mean no the the only no no nothing really all right now if we talk a bit about your your work in the field you would you've worked a lot on horizontal single belt casting process could you talk a bit about that and was that done in industry or academia or both? It was done in industry and academia so so basically it started off back in 1987 when uh Jock okay he was director of research have you have you interviewed him okay good he was for Stelco yes he was director of research at Stelco so so Jock called together the steel makers of Canada and said okay how are we going to make this this um this steel uh in the future because it looks like near neck shape casting is going to be on on on the books and and maybe there's a better way of making steel than continuous casting machines with with uh molds of moving up and down so so I was tasked with the um the problem of finding out what quality the steel had to be in order to have successful products sheet products um with with a new continuous casting process so I did that I said what the temperature of the steel would have to be all the technical stuff and um and I was working with a chap called Joe Herbitson he was my post doc at the time so Joe and I were were also addressing the bigger question about what should the machine look like and um and they they called the the the whole thing was called Projet Bessemer which should have given me a clue at the time that they were focused on Bessemer casting Bessemer twin roll casting but uh I I I wasn't thinking about that I was thinking about the the the way you put a hundred tons per hour per meter width of steel on on a on how would you do it and I came up with the idea of this horizontal single belt caster and I called it horizontal single belt caster because it fits him with HSBC which is the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation but uh but uh but it turns out that um it it it's been a hard struggle since then so so uh first of all the Canadians said no no that's not good we're going to do a twin roll casting project so that was okay I did work with them on twin roll casting what would be the big difference from a uh non metallurgist between your the double and then and the single you were trying to develop oh well it's it's one of productivity the productivity of a twin roll caster is limited by the size of rolls you can have and uh the productivity of a belt caster is just determined by the length of belt you make so so I was projecting a belt of about 12 meters long which is about 40 feet long and then you can you can cool down the the liquid steel and have it freeze and be fine so uh so in actual fact there was my friend in Germany Professor Schwartfeger he had the same idea at the same time and um so uh so it didn't exist yet in in the world it doesn't exist yet we've got the first one now working in in um in uh in Germany in Paine Paine but but we had our individual machines working back in the 1980 1990 and we we I first of all the Canadians weren't interested in it so uh so I sent it out I sent out a machine to um Australia to uh to Jeff Belton who was director of research he was an old imperial college uh graduate and so I knew Jeff as well and Jeff Jeff liked it and he brought back um uh Joe Herbison and uh they were casting steel on the belt caster in 1990 the belt caster was um not it didn't go too far because they were also doing a twin belt casting program so uh so so what happened was that uh the the horizontal single belt caster was was running but then it was stopped and they the the uh management the BHP head office said you can't run two near neck shape casting processes you'll have to do just one and we've got this agreement with IHI uh that's the heavy the um company out to Japan making the twin belt caster twin roll caster so so so so basically they they said uh you've got to stop that work I said and so they stopped the work at uh in the research labs in Newcastle on the horizontal single belt caster and carried on with the uh the the project M it was called and uh so project M actually is now operational it's the only twin belt casting operation in the world I think that is now viable maybe Posco and and Bow Steel have uh have some efforts going that way but all the other companies have given up on twin belt twin roll casting uh for various reasons but um BHP combined with uh with um Newcore in the States Newcore's a uh electric art firms company so Newcore uh Newcore uh formed uh and BHP formed a a company called Castrip and Castrip is still operating it's sort of uh it's 12 years now but it's it's certainly it's it's it's a process that works but it's a process that produces products which are good and um and and uh the question is is what is the the um what is the profitability in it uh I think probably it's okay for Newcore uh but it's certainly not not the answer to to the problem about how to make clean steel sheet uh suitable for automobile automobiles and things like that so so that um that is still a target of this horizontal single belt casting process so um um so yeah so so what happened it's a long story but anyway so so so what happened was that Joe became director of research and Joe said uh would you like it back I said yeah I'll take it back and we were moving into the Wong building so we we uh we brought it back to McGill and worked on it we got a big cfi grant for it and uh and we were casting aluminum sheet material by 2005 I guess it was when it was revamped reworked and uh and then it worked until 2012 and then 2012 um there was an incident in the um in the foundry where we had uh we had a thermite reaction between one of the students was uh was using a grinding machine and uh and the sparks were flying across and there was a small crucible about this size and there was some some uh some some remains of the casting that uh was in there from the day before and the the hot iron oxide was going on the magnesium and uh and then that created a lot of smoke it suddenly went off after about 20 minutes it went off and smoke filled the lab and I guess we'd had one or two little accidents before that from various professors and uh this time the the the exhaust system wasn't working too well this is a long story to say we were kicked out of the hill so we could no longer we could no longer work it yeah so now it's now it's off campus I've got the machine refitted and it's working off campus and my students now work off campus so uh this is the idea now to make it to make it good enough so that it is uh that so that it does make efficient um sheet metal for the automotive industry or yeah yeah still okay so still to protect that target the target is to do that but but you can use that casting process for for many other things as well so so there's there's endless possibilities I think in in that that machine and that that technology and do you have any idea why Canada was more leaning towards the twin uh casting as opposed to this single because it was a new idea and uh and everybody thought of Bessemer's dream and and Bessemer's idea it works uh it works with BHP managed to make it work and nobody else did uh from Nipom Steel were the first to make a twin belt twin rollcaster uh and they they they did two machines and it uh neither worked it it it just wasn't competitive it too many problems with the side dams with the the shape of the rolls you've got to make to get the the flatness it's very very difficult uh and um and the the gas is being entrained uh it and then catching the the stuff as it comes out it's it's a tricky process but even when it's working well that's good but but the companies don't really tell you what the what the uh uptime of a machine is so so I think most of them were not able to uh to make it profitable from a commercial point of view okay so but it looks as though we're hoping very much that this HSBC cast it will will be the answer yeah there's 1.4 billion tons of steel cast per year by the way around the world and it's all at the moment done by the 1960 Jungans process Jungans and Rossi which is the the fixed mold moving up and down and the the quality of the steel on the surfaces is not good there but you have reheat furnaces where where you heat the whole thing up again and and you you get rid of all these you slough off all the the imperfections and so uh that's that's a you know beat it and you'll get it right and it'll work but it takes more time takes more time the money the the the the the infrastructure's massive I mean this thing if we can get it working is would be about a tenth the price really tenth the capital and operating wow we can operate it with five people say and and that's from start to finish so so hopefully it'll it'll work in yeah you know it's it's funny um that's so many of the technologies you know they got them right once and they haven't changed yes a lot of the yeah yeah yeah machinery in the techniques yeah well you said 1960 yeah yeah well 1954 actually there you go um now you've uh you've won the killen prize for engineering in canada for your work on your work on having co-invented the limca process so could you explain what that process is and then how it works yeah the limca process it's uh I think I've got something I wonder if I oh here's one this is a limca for steel this is a uh basically you you put you put this um you put this into liquid steel it's it's all shrouded with cardboard and everything and there's a steel cap at the bottom here but the the guts of it is this this little thing here it's a little tube and there's a little hole small hole here you can hardly see it it's 500 microns half a millimeter yeah yeah so so you you pull a vacuum on that and and you suck up liquid steel into here and uh and then you know what the sample size is and this was made by heraeus electronite and the uh this this is the connection to the anode and the cathode is a sheath of metal comes on the outside and uh basically you pass a heavy current from inside to outside heavy being about 24 amps exactly so if you put 24 amps dc through there then you can then when when an inclusion goes through that little hole there's a little rise in resistance a delta r resistance and so so you can hook that up to uh to uh so say you amplify the signal to millivolt range the trouble with this is that it's all microvolt ranges because the conductivity of liquid metals is so high so so the electrical conductivity is so high so so you got uh you you're only got microvolt signals but the beauty about this is that you're creating microvolt signals in a sea of electrons so so you can see microvolt signals because it's it's ground state zero here so as long as you can catch that signal and amplify it quickly then then you've got a process so that that's basically the the the concept of uh the limca process liquid metal plenilinus analyzer but we use it in in the aluminum industry a lot for um which is a bit a bigger thing and it's it's continuous this is this is a small example so how many would you use in in in one testing of aluminum for example well in one test you'd use one per per drop per aluminum drop so so you'd have if you've got a furnace and you're tapping it could be two hours of pouring of liquid aluminum into a dc casting rung so so you would uh you'd it would last for two hours so that that was very very uh critical for alkan to uh to improve their practices and and get qualified for for making aluminum sheet material for uh for the beverage can business 30% of the beverage cans uh 30% of their their product went into beverage cans so that that they couldn't afford to say no to it yeah so it took a long time to negotiate an agreement with them but but but they they they i had some good people inside alkan who who was supporting the idea so uh so uh it worked but there was a lot of resistance it was not easy to get it out but uh all sorts of difficulties particularly yeah yeah um so this this next question is broader um but it's uh it's it's about your opinion and and what you think in your opinion are there any events people inventions contributions disasters anything really whatsoever that that pop up that ud must be mentioned when talking about the natural resource world in canada what have you interviewed um professor humor queen i have oh good okay i have because he he he knows about railways and bridges and all that sort of he's a huge history buff yeah yeah yeah i just saw him at the uh canadian science and technology history association conference okay good good okay good good good oh that's great okay so yeah i i'm glad you got got him and uh so so what was the question again so it's it's really a broad question so it might sound like a tough question but there's no wrong answers it's if if when talking about the natural resource history natural resource world in canada is there anything that comes to your mind that you know oh we're doing this oral history project i think we should mention this name or this disaster or this invention well i think that the whole disaster is is the the way um i think there is a disaster in sense that in the 1970s 80s and 90s everything was uh canadian and run by canadians and now it's it's uh it's not run by canada even de fasco de fasco got brought up for nothing because they sold off the the sherman mines and everything so de fasco had all these uh mines and and uh astral metal came in brought up de fasco gone and uh i mean i still work with them and uh but it's uh it's it's tough for those people really tough and stelco that was a fine company and uh yeah i talked to with york about that yeah it's fine company it's a real shame in co valley yeah yeah i know that's a disaster yeah i think quite recurring actually you're not the you're not the first at all to uh to mention that and uh yeah it's a very big shift and yeah in the canadian natural resources yeah okay thank you um maybe a few um more social questions but one i i ask almost every time and that's women throw your career and it might have changed but how absent or present have women be have women been in uh and interesting here in academia and also in industry um i think we we've always had about we've always had women coming through and they tend to be very good and uh some of the best miners mining engineers were women uh so uh and we don't have so many in this this particular class that's coming through but uh but i think normally it's running about 20 to 30 30 percent something like that so it's it's it's there is a place for women and uh in in metallurgy for sure and uh in industry was that in industry has that changed you work 25 years so maybe you might have seen a yeah there seem to be a good number of women there uh um of course they get married and and that sort of thing which is but um in the steel making area and the and the the blast furnaces it was all men and uh basically there were recent immigrants many of them who worked on the on the hot metal side of things but uh it's it's a hard job and uh but uh in the labs the the women have got places and in physical metallurgy that that sort of thing in material science there's it's it's more it's less one-sided yeah yeah yeah less one-sided so i think women are okay they do fine and have you seen it increase at all or stay the same or i i think it's uh i think it has increased a bit from my day as a student i think we had i think we had one one girl in three years so in the three years we were there there was one girl and uh and uh and that was it out of how many out of probably about uh 200 oh yeah yeah so it's increased a bit yeah quite a bit yeah yeah all right good um and another another question would be the and and again good perspective here because you've worked in academia and um industry but do you believe there's a disconnect between the natural resource world or or these industries and the general public and if so why i i i don't know that there's such a well i i know defasco and defasco was uh they were very into um to uh local events i mean they were sponsoring all sorts of things that the alkan the same thing they're sponsoring all sorts of interactions with the public say the the the concerts here in in supported by alkan and so i i think that that they've always been very good citizens i mean in the past in 100 150 years ago it would be a natural conversation about how the blast furnace was doing and having a bellyache and that sort of thing and they people don't know about that anymore yeah but they do know that they do know about the steel industry at least in the in the towns where they're operating and and i think uh they have a reasonably positive view of it maybe some people in in in in the public think it's a dirty business but it's not really it's a very high tech business and uh it is dirty it can be dirty but uh but it's very high tech we say it's a smoke stack industry but uh or a sunset industry that is that is a load of garbage yeah it's a total load of garbage put forward by some some people who who should know better that uh that it's a sunset industry it's it's uh it's going through hard times at the moment the steel industry and so is the aluminum industry but um it's uh it seems to be a recurring scene though yeah i mean it it's cyclical yeah they're all cyclical yeah yeah any any mineral any metal any yeah um just a few last questions and this one um again no wrong answer but sometimes people find it tough but what are you proudest of in life and we can split it up we can also say proudest of professionally and then proudest of in general uh well i'm not big i i don't have much pride actually so so i i i what do you believe has what's the most successful part of your life then if someone was outside looking in negotiating universities i guess getting through a university in one piece okay yeah meaning meaning i'm still here okay yeah yeah all right all right yeah um all right so one last question which would be if you're speaking to someone much younger yes like yourself yeah a student all right what what would be the an important life lesson or piece of advice you would give them whether about their future careers or i i would think to to be as good as you can be and and and and not to to uh i suppose really basically to if if you're really involved in enjoying the job then do it if you're not get out and and and find something that really appeals to you what what you do yeah yeah yeah excellent uh is there anything else you'd like to you'd like to add or share no not really i think uh it's canada's being good place and uh yeah thank you okay appreciate it good