Kenneth Henderson Jack was born on 12 October 1918 at his grandmother's flat in Coburg Street,
North Shields. He was the eldest of three sons of John Henderson Jack, mariner, and Emily (née Cozens). He attended King Edward's Primary School and then Tynemouth Municipal High School. He gained a scholarship place to study chemistry at Armstrong College (later part of the Newcastle Colleges of Durham University). Jack graduated with first-class honours in chemistry and came top of his year. After a brief spell in teaching – a requirement of his scholarship – he was directed into war work at the Chemical Defence Research Establishment, Sutton Oak, before the Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, H. L. Riley brought him back to Newcastle in October 1941. Riley led a group involved with the
Ministry of Supply on
armour-plated steel. Jack's work in this field came to the notice of
Sir Charles Goodeve, the first director of the
British Iron and Steel Research Association (BISRA), who appointed him as a Senior Scientific Officer in 1945. After a year at Newcastle, Jack moved to Cambridge for three years, to work on crystallography in W H Taylor's group with
Peter Hirsch.He worked for a PhD while at Cambridge and was awarded the degree in 1949. He then returned to Newcastle as a lecturer in inorganic chemistry, while continuing his work in interstitial alloys. In 1951 Jack was invited to give a paper at the Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference. While there he helped pay his way by giving lectures at various institutions, one of which was
Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Over lunch he was told by the research director,
Clarence Zener, to send for his wife and children and come to work at Westinghouse. On 11 August he and his family arrived in New York on the
Mauretania, and Jack started at the 500-strong research facility, in charge of the X-ray lab. The facility was upgraded with new equipment, some of which he helped build. Although he was offered several jobs in Pittsburgh, Kenneth Jack and his family decided to return to England. They sailed from Montreal on the
Empress of Scotland on 28 August 1953, bound for Liverpool. Back at Newcastle Jack worked on developing his
powder diffraction techniques. He enjoyed his teaching and research, but could gain no promotion or salary increase. After several unsuccessful applications for professorships he accepted a position in 1957 at Thermal Syndicate Limited. He had less freedom than in academia, and was required to focus on the needs of the business. He and his team developed a way ok making a much-improved version of the firm's main product: a fused quartz with the brand name Spectrosil. The new Spectrosil® WF “had outstanding optical transmission as well as a very low impurity content and found important applications in the production of optical fibres for telecommunications”. Kenneth Jack retired from the University of Newcastle in 1984. ==Family==