Australian Dictionary of Biography

Len Hogan, c.1949 [detail]

photo provided by family

Leonard McNamara Hogan (1920–2000), metallurgical researcher, was born on 17 January 1920 at Fairfield, Melbourne, youngest of four children of Victorian-born parents Thomas Leo Hogan, insurance agent and later manager of bars and boarding houses, and his wife Ettie May, née Davis. Three of the children were christened into their mother’s Anglican Church but Len was baptised as a Catholic for his father. He attended the Brigidine convent school at Hawthorn and then Xavier College, Kew (1934–36). His family could not afford to send him to university, so he went into banking, starting at Alice Springs, Northern Territory. When he enlisted as a part-time gunner in the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) in May 1938, he was back in Melbourne and working in the Brunswick branch of the English, Scottish and Australian Bank Ltd.

In World War II Hogan carried out full-time duty in the CMF from 29 January 1942 and then in the Australian Imperial Force from February 1943. He served with the 2/4th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, in New Guinea (September 1943 to February 1944), and at Balikpapan, Borneo, Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), from July 1945 to February 1946. Returning to Melbourne, he was discharged from the AIF on 18 July. He never spoke to his family about his military service except to say that he was grateful for the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, under which he studied at the University of Melbourne (BSc, 1950; MSc, 1952). After graduating, he joined the staff of the Defence Research (Standards from 1953) Laboratories at Maribyrnong.

 On 22 January 1954 at St Peter’s Church of England, Brighton Beach, Hogan married Rosa Hausmann, a senior nurse. The next month he was appointed as the lecturer in physical metallurgy in the newly established department of mining and metallurgical engineering at the University of Queensland (PhD, 1965). In 1959 he was promoted to senior lecturer and in 1968 to reader. He was also sub-dean of the faculty of science for a year from September 1974. Following his retirement in July 1985, he was appointed as an honorary research consultant in the department, in which role he continued until mid-2000.

Hogan had spent most of his career researching solidification, the study of the transformation of metals from liquid to solid state, which occurs in all forms of casting. Understanding the phenomenon allows solidified microstructures to be controlled, thereby determining the mechanical properties and behaviour of cast-manufactured components. His PhD thesis, ‘Some Aspects of the Nature of Eutectics’ (1964), was the first to be granted by the department; it entailed experimental work on aluminium-copper alloys that led him to focus on the coupled-growth concept of eutectic solidification. He organised the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Australian (later Australasian) Institute of Metals, held in Brisbane in 1965—effectively the first international conference on solidification. The published proceedings are a valuable text on global solidification theory at that time. The field became an active area of research and an important contributing process during the additive manufacturing of components.

Early in his career, Hogan developed a partnership with Comalco Industries Pty Ltd (Comalco Ltd from 1970). His research covered most aspects of solidification from theory to practical application in industry, and received substantial funding from the Australian Research Council, as well as Comalco. He published forty-six scientific papers. Many of his PhD students, who worked on his theories, went on to hold senior positions in industry and research organisations. Comalco’s commercialisation of strontium modified aluminium-silicon casting alloys was built on his research. These strong, lightweight, low-cost alloys have an extensive range of applications, especially as components of motor vehicles and aircraft.

A keen collaborator nationally and internationally, Hogan took study leave in England at the University of Birmingham (1961), in the United States of America at Lehigh University, near Philadelphia (1968), and in New Zealand at the University of Auckland (1976). He also spent time with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s division of manufacturing technology in Adelaide and Comalco’s research laboratories in Melbourne. He had significant collaborations with Kojiro Kobayashi and Mohammad Shamsuzzoha, resulting in several important publications. His reputation contributed to the successful application for funds to establish the Cooperative Research Centre for Alloy and Solidification Technology (CAST) at the University of Queensland in 1993. One of his students, David St John, led the solidification group within CAST and was later the centre’s chief executive officer.

Influential in the affairs of the Australasian Institute of Metals, Hogan was a councillor (from 1954) and president (1958, 1979, and 1980) of the Brisbane branch and a long-serving councillor and vice-president (1966–67) of the federal organisation. He received the Brisbane branch’s Florence Taylor medal (1960) and the national body’s meritorious service award (1981) and, ‘in recognition of his services to metallurgical science, metallurgical education and application of science and technology to industry,’ its highest award, the silver medal (1983) (UQA S135).

Hogan was likeable, down-to-earth, kind, quiet, humorous, and an avid reader. His notable capacity to listen helped his students work through the logic of their proposals and theories. He mentored many in the art of writing scientific publications. On 24 June 2000 he died in Wesley Private Hospital, Auchenflower, and was cremated. His wife survived him, as did their two daughters: Annette, who led and managed not-for-profit organisations; and Sandra, a journalist, who wrote the non-fiction book about an Australian spying family With My Little Eye (2021).