John Alexander Mathews was an American metallurgist.
Background
John Alexander Mathews was born on May 20, 1872 in Washington, Pennsylvania. He was the son of William Johnston and Frances Sage (Pelletreau) Mathews. His father, a prosperous merchant, was of Scotch-Irish descent; his mother, of French Huguenot, ancestors of hers having settled on Long Island in 1685. After the death of her husband in 1874 she moved with her four children to Wisconsin, where they lived on a farm for seven years. They returned to Washington when the older children were ready to prepare for college.
Education
John Mathews entered Washington and Jefferson College and was graduated with the degree of B. S. in 1893. At that time his ambition was to become a newspaper man, but failing to secure a position, he entered Columbia University to study chemistry. There he received the degree of Ph. D. in 1898, the title of his thesis being The Action of Nitrils upon Aromatic Acids (1898).
Career
From 1898 to 1900 he was tutor in chemistry at Columbia, and in the latter year he was appointed Barnard Fellow and went to the Royal School of Mines, London, to study metallography under Sir William Roberts-Austen. Entering the commercial field, he became metallurgist for the Sanderson Brothers Works of the Crucible Steel Company, Syracuse, N. Y. , and was soon made assistant manager. In 1908 he was appointed operating manager of the Halcomb Steel Company, Syracuse, and five years later, president and general manager. In 1920 he was made president of the Crucible Steel Company, but, finding that administrative duties in connection with so large an organization precluded time for research, in 1923 he voluntarily shifted to vice-president in charge of research and continued in that capacity until his death. He thus became the technical head of one of the largest producers of special steels, and his laboratory conclusions were of great practical importance. He died on January 11, 1935 of a heart attack at his home in Scarsdale, New York.
Achievements
Mathews was the technical head of one of the largest producers of special steels. He was the author of more than one hundred technical papers and received the Robert W. Hunt gold medal from the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1928 for his paper "Austenite and Austenitic Steels". He was a member of many technical societies and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Carnegie Scholarship by the British Iron and Steel Institute, and upon his return to the United States worked on alloy steels under Prof. Henry Marion Howe. The results of his investigations he published under the title "A Comparative Study of Some Low Carbon Steel Alloys", and the Institute awarded him in 1902 the Carnegie gold medal.
Views
His position was one "demanding clearness of conception, accuracy in execution, and intelligent interpretation of laboratory results, tempered by the sobering restraints of financial balance sheets".
Personality
One of Mathews's ancestors had been a New England silversmith, and a hobby of Mathews was the collection of colonial silverware.
Connections
On January 29, 1903, he married Florence Hosmer King; they had two children Margaret King and John Alexander.
