Peter Salt (1935-1996)

Early in his career at English China Clays (ECC) Peter Salt introduced automated XRD analyses and methods for the qualitative analysis of clays and accessory minerals. Following the discovery that crystalline silica was a probable human carcinogen, Salt showed that by careful experimentation accurate quantitation of quartz in clays and other industrial minerals at the 0.1 wt.% level could be determined by XRD. His final work on particle statistics was published in Powder Diffraction just a few weeks before his death. Peter was well known and highly regarded in the industrial powder diffraction community and received a BCA-IG award in 1995.