Norman Koon was a senior researcher at the US Naval Research Laboratory when, in 1980, he and his colleague Badri Das completed work that was presented at the 1980 Magnetism & Magnetic Materials Conference, on rapidly-quenched alloys of terbium-based [Tb-Fe-B] magnetic alloys. Dr. Koon filed for [and subsequently obtained] the first US patent on the subject matter, and by 1981, he was working on Nd-Fe-B alloys. Of course, by this time, other groups including GM and Sumitomo were also working in this area, having seen the work that Dr. Koon had presented previously. In later years, there would be extensive patent litigation on these rare earth-based [RE-Fe-B] alloys, as various parties jostled to establish who owned what rights to the commercial successes that they would bring.

Other contributions from Dr. Koon and his team included magnetostrictive compounds such as Ho-Tb-Dy-Fe, research on crystal field effects in rare earth based Laves phase compounds and an understanding of spin dynamics of rare earth intermetallics.

Dr. Koon passed away in 1997 – an article on his work and life was published in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics in May 1998, by his former colleagues.

GM’s Delco Remy Magnequench division [which was subsequently spun off], Sumitomo Special Metals, and others, went on to conduct extensive further research on Nd-Fe-B materials, which led to the evolution of high performance material grades of Nd-Fe-B perhaps undreamt of a quarter century ago… however, I think it’s fair to say that the work of Norman Koon was a vital part of that evolution, one that future article writers would do well to remember.