It is with great sadness that we announce the untimely death of Brian A. Martin in Sydney from mesothelioma on Monday, 2nd September 2024. Brian had been a member of ICorr since 1972 and was made an Honorary Member in 2017, whereby the presentation made to him in Australia read as follows:
“The Institute of Corrosion (ICorr) recognises the considerable contribution that Brian A. Martin has made to the science and practice of cathodic protection, in particular to buried pipelines, both in Australia and internationally. Brian has been a long-term professional member and then Fellow of ICorr in the UK; we know that he has been a strong supporter of the ACA and a strong contributor to Standards Australia, to International Standards and to the Training and Professional Development of Cathodic Protection Engineers in Australasia. He has pushed our practice of CP forward and he has given back his time and his enthusiasm and has fully shared his knowledge with others to the benefit of the entire corrosion protection community. He has earned this Honorary Fellowship of ICorr.”
Brian came to the UK in 1970 to study at Sir John Cass for his MSc under Prof. Lionel Shrier, who had just moved from Battersea/Surrey to Cass. Brian worked part-time at ‘Spencers’ during his MSc studies, with a desk in a dimensionally challenged office with a tiny window overlooking the Buckingham Palace gardens.
His contributions to Australian and International Standards will not be forgotten. Brian Wyatt and Markus Buchler much appreciated his contribution to the European supposed controversy over the impacts of concentration polarisation on CP (in all environments). This is still rumbling along in Germany due to folk who manage to misread some of the wonderful work done there in the 1960s and 1970s. Brian participated in the wide and open discussion on this in the CEOCOR Congress in Stockholm in 2016 and was a coauthor of the paper ‘Cathodic protection of soil-buried steel pipelines—a critical discussion of protection criteria and threshold values,’ which resulted from this. Despite one of the authors being H.-G. Schöneich, considered the leading pipeline CP specialist in Germany at that time, this paper still offends a segment of the German CP fraternity. Brian had been a member of the Australasian Corrosion Association (ACA) since 1969 and was an Honorary Life member, holder of the Corrosion Medal, Australasian President as well as active in the Electrolysis Committee as President and Secretary for over 30 years. In addition, Brian was a P. F. Thompson lecturer as well as an internationally recognised expert in cathodic protection of pipelines.
He was passionate and intense about his profession, martial arts and very fast cars. Few people who have been a passenger in a Brian Martin driven car would forget the experience. Or wish to repeat it. More than that, he was a warm and engaging friend who will be sorely missed. Typical of Brian, he held a farewell Wake a few days before his demise to which all invited could see that, despite his illness, he had lost none of his essential spirit. Anecdotes about Brian are endless. from driving up an English motorway shoulder on a motorbike at 160 km/hour to see if it could be done, to surfing inadvertently on a Nudist beach. He really did land by helicopter in remote Papua New Guinea for a week’s unaccompanied trek to do a resistivity survey.
He was a lovable mad bugger in cars, boats, and sports. Always striving for excellence and pushing boundaries. These attributes carried over more safely into his professional life.
Brian is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Cheryl, and daughter Tara and grandchildren. In his memory, his friends have suggested that the first paper delivered to the Cathodic protection stream of each Annual ACA Conference be named ‘The Brian Martin Lecture’, and that it ought to contain some controversial issues! That will be a perfect memorial.
Brian Wyatt and Warren Green
