Frederick Becket was born on January 11, 1875, in Montreal, Canada, to Anne (Wilson) and Robert Anderson Becket. His father, whose family came from Ayrshire, Scotland, was president of the City Ice Company of Montreal and a prominent member of its Erskine Presbyterian Church. His mother, of northern Irish descent, bore her husband twelve children, of whom only five (four boys and a girl) survived to adulthood; of these Frederick was the next to youngest.
Frederick Becket attended local schools, learned to play the piano with considerable skill, developed a strong baritone voice, and became expert at rugby and hockey (in later years he played with New York City amateur teams). He was athletic in build, distinguished in appearance, and a good scholar. He achieved honors in thermodynamics in his senior year at McGill University, from which he graduated in 1895 with the degree of bachelor of applied science in electrical engineering. Later he enrolled in the graduate school of Columbia University and received a master's degree in physical chemistry in 1899.
Seeking a future in electrical work, Becket came to the United States and took a job with Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1896 he joined the Acker Process Company of Jersey City, New Jersey, where he came in contact with high-temperature electrochemistry. Eager to get into this field, but recognizing his need for more fundamental knowledge about it, he enrolled in the graduate school of Columbia University. In 1899 he received a master's degree in physical chemistry and was transferred to Acker's new plant in Niagara Falls, New York, as its chief electrician. The next year Becket returned to Columbia to plunge into advanced study in chemistry with Prof. Charles F. Chandler and in metallurgy with Henry M. Howe.
Becket returned in 1902 to Niagara Falls, where he first took a job with the Ampere Electrochemical Company. A year later he struck out on his own, helping to organize the Niagara Research Laboratories, Inc. , for electrometallurgical research. His associates and stockholders, however, became impatient for profitable results and drifted away, leaving Becket to handle the experimental, development, and sales efforts. In what he later called "one of the most valuable and interesting experiences of my lifetime, " he worked out the technique of producing low-carbon ferroalloys and alloying metals by reducing ores in an electric furnace with silicon instead of carbon--the silicon reduction process. Such alloys had earlier been made by using aluminum instead of silicon, but that method had proved unsuitable to large-scale production. Becket's innovation laid the groundwork for the production of low-carbon ferrochrome and stainless steels. Beyond using silicon as a reductor, he also successfully experimented with the production of silicon alloys, which were eventually used with aluminum alloys in the manufacture of airplanes.
In 1906 Becket joined the newly formed Electro Metallurgical Company, a predecessor of Union Carbide Corporation, which also acquired his patents and his laboratory. Here he became chief metallurgist and in 1907 began commercial production of ferrosilicon and low-carbon ferrochrome. By 1910 he had set up an experimental laboratory; extending the scope of his earlier work, he produced results which made possible the production of the ferrozirconium and ferrovanadium, alloys used in the production of armor plate during the last days of World War I. Becket was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1918.
With the incorporation of Union Carbide, he became successively chief metallurgist and vice-president of the parent company and, in 1927, president of Union Carbide and Carbon Research Laboratories in Long Island City. Here he continued to do experimental work, with more than 120 patents issued in his name. His major achievements of this period, however, were in inspiring and developing the men who would further advance metallurgy and create the metals that would eventually take man to the moon and back. He retired in 1940 and died two years later in Roosevelt Hospital, New York City. His remains were cremated.
Frederick Becket was an outstanding metallurgist who one of the first developed a process of using silicon instead of carbon as a reducing agent in metal production. He also discovered and developed the process for reducing ores by silicon, the production of ferro-vanadium on a commercial scale, the production of molybdenum by direct smelting and increased the manufacture of calcium carbide to a much larger scale. Becket pioneered in the use of the electric furnace in the production of ferrovanadium, ferromanganese, ferromolybdenum, ferrotungsten, and low-carbon ferrochromium, an essential ingredient of stainless steel. In 1956 the Electrochemical Society, on a grant from Union Carbide, established a scholarship in high-temperature electric furnace work in Becket's name.
Frederick Becket was president of the Electrochemical Society (1925 - 1926) and the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (1933).
In his work Becket displayed a keen intellect, a remarkable memory, great thoroughness, and an infinite capacity for detail. In person he had broad interests, high ethical standards, and a quiet, gentlemanly charm.
In 1900, Frederick Becket married Frances Kirby of New York City and three months later saw his twenty-two-year-old bride die of a ruptured appendix. On October 8, 1908, Becket married Geraldine McBride of Niagara Falls; they had two daughters, Ethelwynn and Ruth.
